“How about you? Do you think you’ll be able to contain yourself when you——”
“I expect so.”
“Why don’t you ask me how she looks?” Lena inquired, still affecting to rally him gaily. “I know you’re dying to. I’ve seen her; I was looking from my window and saw her go out and walk up the street this afternoon. I laughed so!”
“What about?”
“She was such a perfect picture of a big Western woman! Absolutely typical!”
“You mean like mother, for instance?”
“No; your mother’s a dear thing who’d be lovely anywhere; I never think of her as Western at all,” Lena said. “She isn’t.”
“She is as much as Martha is—or anybody else. She was born here and——”
“Not at all!” Lena interrupted airily. “The real Western woman is like your mountain girl. They love to be huge; that’s why they live in the prairie country—so they’ll look even bigger. One reason I laughed was because your friend was just exactly as much the typical Western woman after all this time abroad as she was before she went. She was wearing all kinds of expensive clothes, and I haven’t a doubt she’d got them in Paris, but on her they looked perfectly as Western as if she’d just bought ’em and put ’em on downtown at Kohn & Sons! Do you suppose you’ll be able to control your raptures at all when you meet her again, old innocent Dannie?”
“See here,” he said, “I wish you’d let me get fixed for dinner. I had a pretty hot day’s work and I’d like to——”