“So?” Mrs. Dodge said, inquiringly; and her tone was the more significant because of her appearing to be wholly preoccupied with her work-basket. “You noticed that, did you?”
“You don’t mean to say——”
“I don’t mean to say anything at all,” she interrupted, crisply. “I’ve told you that often enough for you to begin to understand it.”
“All right, I do. Well, when she’d said whatever she did say to the chauffeur, what happened?”
“Oh, that,” she returned, “I’m perfectly willing to tell you. I got up and looked at her over the hedge. I wasn’t going to stay there and listen—and I certainly wasn’t going to crawl away on my hands and knees! I just looked at her quietly and turned away and came into the house.”
“What did she do?”
“She was absolutely disconcerted. Her face just seemed to go all to pieces;—it didn’t look like her face at all. She was frightened to death, and I never saw anything plainer. That’s one reason she hates me so—because I saw her looking so afraid of me and she couldn’t help it. Of course, as soon as I got into the house I looked out through the lace curtains at a window—you could hardly expect me not to—and I saw her just going back into her own house by the side door. She’d braced up and looked all stained-glass Joan of Arc again by that time.”
Mr. Dodge sat waggling his head and muttering in wonder. “Of all the curious things!” he said. “Human nature is so everlastingly full of oddities it’s always turning up new ones that you sit and stare at and can’t believe are real. There they are, right before your eyes, and yet they’re incredible. What did she say to the chauffeur?”
“No, no,” Mrs. Dodge said, reprovingly. “That’s what I can’t tell you.” And she added, “I should think you could guess it, anyhow.”
“Was there——” He paused a moment, pondering. “Did she use any specially marked terms of endearment in addressing him?”