"The Mallard barn dances are always so much fun," said Lloyd, lingering to give a final touch to her mother's toilet. "Wait! Yoah side combs are in too high, and yoah collah isn't pinned straight in the back. How did you evah manage to dress yoahself right befoah I grew up to tend to you?"
As she made the changes with all a young girl's particularity about trifles, she went on, "That last one they had three yeahs ago was lovely. Will you evah forget the way Rob cake-walked with Mrs. Bisbee? It makes me laugh to this day, whenevah I think of it."
"I suppose Rob will hardly be there to-night," said Mrs. Sherman, smiling as she recalled the ridiculous appearance he had made. His cake-walk had been the feature of the evening.
"No, indeed," answered Lloyd. "He's no moah likely to be there than the man in the moon. I wish he would though. He used to be the life of everything. We saw him this evening as we drove home from the picnic. He had just come out from town, and he looked so hot and dusty and ti'ahed it made me feel bad. He's like a strangah now, didn't stop to speak, only lifted his hat and turned in at the gate at Oaklea, as if he hadn't gone on a thousand drives with us. He ought to have been interested in what we were doing for old times' sake."
Lloyd had not thought of Rob for days, but she was reminded of him many times that evening, the affair at the Mallards' barn was so much like the one to which he had taken her three years before. The same old negro fiddlers furnished the music. The same flickering lantern light made weird shadows on the rough walls, and the same sweet smell of new hay filled the place. As the music of the Virginia reel began she thought of the way Rob had romped through it that other time, and wished she could see him once more as jolly and care-free as he was then.
"Why can one nevah have two good times exactly alike?" she wondered wistfully. She was standing near the wide double doors, looking out across the fields as she thought about it later, recalling how many things were alike on the two occasions, even the colour of the dress she wore. She remembered that because Rob had said she looked like an apple-blossom, and it was rare indeed for him to make such complimentary speeches. It wasn't best for girls to hear nice things about themselves often, he said. It made them hard to get along with, too uppity.
The music stopped and Leland Harcourt came to find her. She was looking so pensively past the gay scene that he bent over her, humming in a low tone:
"'What's this dull town to me?
Robin Adair?
What was 't I wished to see?
What wished to hear?'"
She started with a little laugh, blushing slightly because he seemed to have read her thoughts. "Robin Adair" was one of Mrs. Moore's old names for Rob, and she had been wishing for him.
Over at Oaklea, Rob sat scowling at a book spread out before him on the library table. He was thinking of Harcourt as he had seen him on the front seat beside Lloyd, in his cool-looking white flannels, the very embodiment of gentlemanly leisure. No doubt she noticed the contrast between them, he all dusty and dishevelled from his day's work and the trip home on the hot car. Not that he would change places, not that he regretted for an instant the part he had to take in the grimy working world. But the chance encounter had suddenly opened his eyes to all that he had had to sacrifice for that work. Until now it had not even left him time to realize how much he had given up. Now to find this stranger enjoying all that was once his, stung him to envy. He smiled grimly as he recognized it as envy. He had thought himself free from such a childish trait. But he could not smile away the feeling. It persisted till it accomplished more than the old Judge's advice and his mother's pleadings, that all work and no play was bad for him. Closing his book he announced his intention of walking over to The Locusts.