"Where did you get the lamp?" asked the general as the Watermelon led the way in.
"Found it," said the Watermelon. "The place is furnished. The family is probably only away for a visit." He set the lamp on the table and from long habit wiped his dusty hand on his trouser leg. "I fell over everything in the room before I got next to the fact."
He glanced about with some pride and the others stood in a semicircle and stared around. The room was a typical country kitchen, a huge stove side by side with a large chintz-covered rocking-chair. A dresser for the crockery and a haircloth lounge took up one side. There was a center-table with a red checked cloth, a few chairs and a sewing-machine near the window. On the walls were a number of cheap prints and several huge advertising calendars With gay pictures of young women in large hats and low-cut dresses.
Bartlett glanced around and at every unfamiliar object his heart sank lower and lower and his first sickening suspicion became a painful fact. He had never been in that room before. The Higginses had never lived there. Everything was strange, the furniture, the rugs, the very shape of the room. Where were they? Whose house had they unceremoniously broken into? A clammy chill crept down Bartlett's back and his florid face grew still redder.
None of the others was noticing him. The general was prowling around to see that the enemy could not come upon them unawares. The Watermelon had lifted the basket on to the table and the girls were preparing gaily to set forth the repast, all three rummaging in closets and drawers for plates and knives and forks.
The general returned to the table. "All serene along the Potomac," said he, thrusting his hands into his pockets and peering into the basket with renewed hope. Henrietta smiled gaily. She had pushed aside her auto veil, her cheeks were flushed with the joy of the adventure and her eyes bright.
"Father," said she, "in all our lives, we have never had an adventure before, because you persist in using those blue books."
The general laughed and helped himself to a sandwich.
Billy opened the dresser and peered gingerly in, her small nose wrinkled for any unforeseen emergency. She had taken off her hat, and her soft yellow hair, bound back by a black velvet snood, escaped around her temples in tiny waves. Her eyes, thought the Watermelon, were brighter than the lamp upon the table and her laughing, kissable mouth redder than the crimson lips of the fair creatures in the gay calendars on the wall. Her hand upon the latch of the door was so near his own, that he was tempted to put his on it, but instead slipped his into his pocket with a delicacy he did not recognize in himself. She was a girl, young and sweet and attractive, and because she was attractive, she had been flung into the maw of the Street, a victim of the age's insane desire for money and more money. Each dainty curl, each flash and disappearance of her single dimple had been reckoned as so much in dollars and cents. So the Watermelon put his hand in his pocket and only watched her with poorly veiled admiration.
"Do you know what I am looking for?" she asked, glancing at him, her eyes full of mischief.