Dade turned toward her as if she had an unpleasant revelation to make, and said, hesitatingly:
“Well, Emily—he’s grown fat!”
She thought of the trim, narrow-waisted figure of her own brown soldier lover. But Emily only laughed.
“Yes,” she observed, “Mother Garwood says his father filled out at his age.”
Then Dade resumed her celebration of Beck once more, and described for Emily the glories of the Army and Navy ball. And when she had done, she sat, her chin on her little white fist, and looked dreamily out of the open window into the cool green foliage of the trees, where some robins were building a nest. Emily likewise fell into reverie, and they sat there a long time before the reverie was broken. It was Dade at last who said:
“Emily, ah mah’ied people happieh than single people?”
The childishness of the question was lost upon Emily, whose thoughts had been busy with the unpleasant task of contrasting her own girlhood’s dreams and their fulfilment with the dreams of Dade and their promise.
“No,” she said in reply. Her voice was a mere hollow note.
“Ah yo’ all happy?” said Dade.
“Y-yes,” Emily answered. Her voice was still pitched on that hollow note.