"What?" she demanded.
"Wait and see." His ruse had succeeded. She was no longer looking swampward with that gleam of purpose in her eye.
"Come on then," she said, prodding him into action.
Val changed slowly. If one didn't care about mucking around in the garden, as Ricky seemed to delight in doing, there was so little in the way of occupation. He thought of the days as they spread before him. A little riding, a great amount of casual reading and—what else? Was the South "getting" him as the tropics are supposed to "get" the Northerners?
That unlucky meeting with a mountaintop had effectively despoiled him of his one ambition. Soldiers with game legs are not wanted. He couldn't paint like Charity, he couldn't spin yarns like Rupert, he possessed a mind too inaccurate to cope with the intricacies of any science. And as a business man he would probably be a good street cleaner.
What was left? Well, the surprise he had promised Ricky might cover the problem. As he reached for a certain black note-book, someone knocked on his door.
"Mistuh Val, wheah's Miss 'Chanda? She ain't up heah an' Ah wan's to—"
Lucy stood in the hall. The light from the round window was reflected from every corrugated wave of her painfully marcelled hair. Her vast flowered dress had been thriftily covered with a dull-green bib-apron and she had changed her smart slippers for the shapeless gray relics she wore indoors. Just now she looked warm and tired. After all, running two households was something of a task even for Lucy.
"Why, she should be in her room. We came up to change. Miss Charity's gone home with a headache. What was it you wanted her for?"
"Dese heah cu'ta'ns, Mistuh Val"—she thrust a mound of snowy and beruffled white stuff at him—"dey has got to be hung. An' does Miss 'Chanda wan' dem in her room or does she not?"