“I say, Charlie, old boy, let’s have a game of billiards,” said Fred, after a few puffs. “I’ll give you twenty points and beat you out of your boots.” Now I was very fond of billiards, and usually didn’t care who knew it, but Mrs. Pinkerton did not approve of the game, and had no knowledge that I indulged in it. But Fred would speak in that absurd shouting way of his, and all the ladies heard him. Again I mustered up resolution and went into the billiard room, but I played very indifferently, and was thinking all the time of my mother-in-law and her opinion of me. I really wanted to get into her good graces, but it required the sacrifice of all my own inclinations, and I despised a man who deliberately played the hypocrite to win anybody’s favor.
After two or three listless games I said to Fred, “I guess I will join the ladies.” I was feeling some qualms of conscience for staying away from Bessie a whole hour at once.
“Oh, hang the ladies!” was Fred’s graceless response; “they can take care of themselves. My wife gets along well enough without me, I know, and yours will soon learn to be quite comfortable without your guardian presence; besides she’s got her mother now. By the way, what a mighty grand old dowager Mrs. Pink is!”
“Pinkerton is her name,” I said, a little haughtily, as if resenting the liberty he took with my mother-in-law’s cognomen.
“Oh, yes, I know, but the name is too long; and besides, she reminds one of a full-blown pink, a little on the fade, perhaps, but still with a good deal of bloom about her. Is she going to live with you? Precious fine time you will have!” he added, having received his answer by a nod. “She’ll boss the shebang, you bet!”
“Oh, I guess not,” I answered, not liking his slangy way of talking about my affairs, and resolving in my own mind that I would be master in my own house.
“Well, then there’ll be a fine old tussle for supremacy, and don’t you forget it!”
With this remark Fred wandered off down the dusty road, humming Madame Angot, and I drew up a chair by Bessie’s side. She had evidently been wishing I would come. Mr. Desmond was sitting a little apart from the rest, twisting his fingers in his watch-chain and looking intently at the mountain-top opposite, as if expecting somebody to come over with a dispatch for him. Mrs. Pinkerton sat by her daughter’s side in calm grandeur, her gray puffs—that fine silver-gray that comes prematurely on aristocratic brows—seeming like appendages of a queenly diadem. Miss Van had been diverting the company with a lively account of her day’s adventures. She was always having adventures, and had a faculty of relating them that was little short of genius.
“Well, my dear, are you having a good time?” I murmured in Bessie’s ear.
“Oh, yes; but I was feeling a little lonesome without you.”