While Sally was stacking the soiled supper plates on the dining table, the telephone rang three short and one long ring, and Pearl, who had been almost forcibly holding David Nash in conversation, sprang to answer it. The instrument was fastened to the dining room wall. Pearl stood lolling against it, a delighted smile on her face, her fingers picking at the torn wallpaper.
“Un-hunh!... Sure!... Oh, that’ll be swell, Ross! I was just wishing for some excitement!... How many’s coming? Five?... Oh, you hush! Sure, we’ll dance! We got a grand radio, you know—get Chicago and.... All right, hurry up! And, oh, say, Ross, you might pick up another girl. Sadie Pratt, or somebody. I got a sweetie of my own. Un-hunh! David Nash, a junior from A. & M., is staying with us this summer. Didn’t you know?... Am I? I’ll tell the world! You just wait till you see him, and then you’ll want to jump in the river!... Aw, quit your kidding!... Well, hurry! ’Bye!”
Before the one-sided conversation was concluded, David Nash had quietly left the room by way of the kitchen door. When Sally staggered in with her armload of soiled dishes she found David at the big iron sink, pouring hot water from a heavy black teakettle into a granite dishpan.
“Thought I’d help,” he said in a low voice, to keep Pearl from overhearing. “You must be tired and bewildered, and washing up for nine people is no joke. Give me the glasses first,” he added casually as he reached for the wire soap shaker that hung on a nail above the sink.
“Oh, please,” Sally gasped in consternation. “I can do them. It won’t take me any time. Why, at the Home, six of us girls would wash dishes for three hundred. They wouldn’t like it,” she added in a terrified whisper, her eyes fluttering first toward the dining room door, then toward the big pantry where Mrs. Carson was picking over her blackberries.
“I like to wash dishes,” David said firmly, and that settled it, at least so far as he was concerned.
Sally was trotting happily between table and cupboard when Pearl came in, stormy-eyed, sullen-mouthed.
“Well, I must say, you’re a quick worker—and I don’t mean on dishes!” she snapped at Sally. “So this is the way you have to study, Mr. David Nash! But I suppose she pulled a sob story on you and just roped you in. You’d better find out right now, Miss Sally Ford, that you can’t shirk your work on his farm. That’s not what Papa got you for—”
“I insisted on helping with the dishes, Pearl,” David interrupted the bitter tirade in his firm, quiet way. “Want to get a dish cloth and help dry them?” There was a twinkle in his eyes and he winked ever so slightly at Sally.
“I’ve got to dress. Five or six of the bunch are coming over to dance to the radio music. Did you hear what I said about you?” Pearl answered, her shallow blue eyes coquetting with David.