"Swell. Let me look at you under the sunlight." In a tennis eye shade, green sports dress, and rope-soled zapatos she seemed to be more of a woman than she was in evening clothes.
"Well?"
"You'll do," he laughed. "It's just that evening clothes rarely reveal more than the size of a woman's shopping budget."
Margaret laughed easily. "You mean that you can't tell whether a girl in an evening gown has knock knees or a wooden leg. I have neither. There's my car. That little jalopy."
"How far is your place from the station?" Hall asked.
"It starts right here." Margaret pointed to a green field to the left of the road. "I have four thousand acres between the tracks and the main house, and then there's a lot of scrub forest behind the house that belongs to me."
"All yours?"
The car was raising great clouds of dust on the dry dirt road. "Uh huh. The money came from Mother's side of the family. Since she died, I more or less keep the old man in embassies. She left him only cigarette money." She was very cold and matter of fact about it.
"I see," he said.
"Don't be so shocked. I always talk the way I feel. The old man's a stuffed shirt and you know it. If he hadn't married money the best he'd get out of life would be a career as a floor-walker in Macy's. No, he's too aristocratic for Macy's. In Wanamaker's Philadelphia store. Do me a favor. There's a big heavy ledger in the side door pocket. Take it out and put it on my lap. No, with the binding facing the radiator. Thanks."