It was a long time before he had more than five minutes at a stretch in which to talk privately with her. Then one morning he came in to breakfast and saw that the chair of Mama Joy was empty; and Flora, when he went into the kitchen afterward, told him with almost a relish in her tone that Mrs. Bridger—she called her that, also with a relish—was in bed with toothache.
"Her face is swollen on one side till she couldn't raise a dimple to save her life," she announced, glancing to see that the doors were discreetly closed. "It's such a relief, when you've had to look at them for four years. If I had dimples," she added, spitefully rattling a handful of knives and forks into the dishpan, "I'd plug the things with beeswax or dough, or anything that I could get my hands on. Heavens! How I hate them!"
"Same here," said Billy, with guilty fervor. It was treason to one of his few principles to speak disparagingly of a woman, but it was in this case a great relief. He had never before seen Flora in just this explosive state, and he had never heard her say "Heavens!" Somehow, it also seemed to him that he had never seen her so wholly lovable. He went up to her, tilted her head back a little, and put a kiss on the place where dimples were not. "That's one uh the reasons why I like yuh so much," he murmured. "Yuh haven't got dimples or yellow hair or blue eyes—thank the Lord! Some uh these days, girlie, I'm going t' pick yuh up and run off with yuh."
Her eyes, as she looked briefly up at him, were a shade less turbulent. "You'd better watch out or she will be running off with you!" she said, and drew gently away from him. "There! That's a horrid thing to say, Billy Boy, but it isn't half as horrid as—And she watches me and wants to know everything we say to each other, and is—" She stopped abruptly and turned to get hot water.
"I know it's tough, girlie." Charming Billy, considering his ignorance of women, showed an instinct for just the sympathy she needed. "I haven't had a chance to speak to yuh, hardly, for months—anything but common remarks made in public. How long does the toothache last as a general thing?" He took down the dish towel from its nail inside the pantry door and prepared to help her. "She's good for to-day, ain't she?"
"Oh, yes—and I suppose it does hurt, and I ought to be sorry. But I'm not. I'm glad of it. I wish her face would stay that way all winter! She's so fussy about her looks she won't put her nose out of her room till she's pretty again. Oh, Billy Boy, I wish I were a man!"
"Well, I don't!" Billy disagreed. "If yuh was," he added soberly, "and stayed as pretty as yuh are now, she'd—" But Billy could not bring himself to finish the sentence.
"Do you think it's because you're so pretty that she—"
Flora smiled reluctantly. "If I were a man I could swear and swear!"
"Swear anyhow," suggested Billy encouragingly. "I'll show yuh how."