“So that started it.” The Baxter girl mused aloud. “I think that’s romantic now—to make a famous picture and to pick up one’s husband, all in twenty-four hours.”
“‘Pick up!’”
“You know what I mean—fall in love.”
“‘Fall in love!’”
“Nita, don’t trample.” Miss Howe threw the Baxter girl a cigarette.
“I only mean—it was romantic, meeting like that so long ago and nobody knowing a word until just before they were married, except you, Miss Serle. And I don’t believe you guessed?” She questioned her with defiant eyebrows.
“How could I guess what never happened? ‘In love!’ I suppose it deceived some good folks.”
“It wasn’t so long ago,” Miss Howe soothered them. She had a funny little way of slipping people into another subject if she thought that they sounded quarrelsome. ‘Let’s be comfortable!’ was written all over her. And yet she could scratch. I think that a great many women are like Miss Howe.
“Long ago? Of course not!” Anita picked it up at once. “How long is it? A year? Eighteen months? April, wasn’t it? She wrote The Resting-place in the next three months. Scamped. I shall always say so. She was three years over Ploughed Fields. Yes, April began it. The Resting-place was out for the Christmas sales. She married him at Easter. And now it’s November. The year’s not gone. But Madala Grey is gone.”
“Where?” said the Baxter girl intensely.