“Awfully orderly,” he replied, reaching out to restrain her hand that held the silver water-bottle. “Can’t bear to see things spilled.”
“Huh!” she said disdainfully.
They went back to the living-room and sat down again.
“See you’ve both been to the wedding,” remarked Miss Loeffler. “You look it. Have a lingering odor of ceremony about you. All very smooth and elegant, I suppose?” And she lighted a cigarette.
Julie was crocheting. “No, Irene,” she said, “you needn’t go around pretending to despise weddings and then come here and try to worm a description of this one out of me. If you wanted to know what it was like you ought to have gone to it and seen for yourself.”
Stacey laughed, as much at his sister’s keenness as at her guest’s eccentricity. But Miss Loeffler was vexed.
“I don’t pretend!” she asserted hotly. “I do dislike weddings. And if I ever want to go and live with a man I shall, without making a silly fuss about it, and then when either he or I get bored we’ll simply break off.”
Julie sighed. “I’m afraid you’ll find it a very nervous wearing life,” she remarked calmly. “I shouldn’t care for it myself, but then I’m—”
“Oh, perfectly hopeless, Julie! You belong back in the eighteen-eighties. What do you think about it, Mr. Carroll?”
“About marriage?” Stacey asked. “Nothing at all. Doesn’t interest me. But I should say you people were at least as Victorian as Julie. You’re quite as excited about the necessity of not having a ceremony as old-fashioned people are about having one.”