"Your idea of virginal purity doesn't interest me," Rod said as he rose. "If Phil and I happen to have certain ideas about common decency which you can't understand, why, that's your misfortune. But if you want to get along with me, eldest brother, you'll leave my moral and social training alone. If you don't like my associates, you can ignore them. Keep your homiletics for your customers."
"All right, kiddo," Grove agreed ironically. "You're a Norquay and you can do no wrong. But I can tell you from experience, Roderick, old kid, that these poor men's daughters generally figure on getting something out of traveling with fellows like us. Believe me, they do."
Rod didn't answer. He was angry, both at Grove's advice and insinuation. In another second he would have been ready to blow up. So he walked to the door. In a square mirror let into a panel he got a glimpse of Grove, half-turned in his chair, looking after him with a slightly puzzled expression.
Laska had asked Rod to luncheon at the house. Grove lunched at his club. Phil had vanished about his own affairs after declining Laska's invitation. He wondered if Phil suffered from constancy; if love were a thing that endured beyond hope. He couldn't say. There was a difference in Phil. But there was a subtle sort of change manifest in everything Rod knew. At any rate he, himself, had no reason to find anything but pleasure in lunching with his sister-in-law.
So he went alone. He walked the twenty blocks that lay between the downtown traffic roar and Grove's home in the West End, thinking of his brother's cynical advice. In so far as it bore upon Mary Thorn, Rod dismissed it contemptuously. He had met Mary by such chance as brings people together in any town. She was on her way to keep an engagement and he had walked with her the length of the beach along English Bay. But Rod had foresightedly provided himself with her telephone number. Now in a spirit closely akin to defiance he stopped at a pay station and called her up. Yes, she was free that afternoon. Yes, she would go for a walk with him.
Rod went on, more placidly. She was the same Mary Thorn who used to run the rapids with him, but a little taller. She had attained womanhood and bore herself accordingly. Rod had never been able to make invidious class distinctions between himself and her. He couldn't now. Along with Phil she had a place in his affection which she had preëmpted long before either was aware of sex. Rod's active and analytical mind had lately come to the conclusion that of all the people young and old in this land of his birth there were only two who could stir him to any warmth,—Phil and Mary. That puzzled him. He supposed he must be an emotional freak. He had chums in Montreal. He knew men, women and girls by the score here in Vancouver. He regarded girls here and elsewhere with sophomoric condescension. He never missed them when they were absent. And he had missed Mary Thorn. How much he didn't realize until he met her again, after two years. It was very odd. The emotional and intellectual experience of twenty couldn't account for such facts.
Rod soon gave over trying. He found himself turning in at Grove's gate, and Laska coming forward in a hall to greet him.
Late June had ushered in a burst of heat. Their luncheon was served on a porch screened by wistaria. The purple clusters of bloom scented the cool shade. A seven-foot ivy-grown wall enclosed the grounds, shutting away everything but the neighboring upper stories and the high, green timber of Stanley Park on the west. It was almost as quiet there as in the woods. The downtown rumble was a far surflike mutter that made a tonal background for the hum of bees foraging in the wistaria.
Laska talked at intervals. She had grown up in Montreal. She asked Rod about places and people there, grew briefly reminiscent about her childhood. Curled in a hammock after luncheon, she was silent for a time.
"Rod," she said abruptly, "when your father comes—he's due to-morrow, isn't he?—do something for me, will you?"