“She looked pretty from the back,” Ruddy explained. “Wanted to see by her face whether her boy had been kissing her. You are a funny chap.”
They got tired of wandering. On the edge of a low garden wall, with their backs against the railing, they seated themselves. It was in a road of small villas, dotted with golden windows and shadowy with the foam of foliage.
Ruddy pulled out a cigarette. “I liked her most awfully. Us’ally I don’t like girls.”
“Desire?” Teddy’s heart bounded at being able to speak her name so frankly.
“Desire. Yes. I’ve got an idea that she’s a sort of relation. Ma won’t tell a thing about her. I can’t ask Hal—he’s too cut up. When I speak to Harriet, she says ‘Hush.’ There’s a mystingry.”
For a week Ruddy opened his heart wider and wider, till he had all but confessed that he was in love with Desire. Then one day, with the depressed air of a conspirator, he inveigled Teddy into the shrubbery of Orchid Lodge.
“Want to ask you something. You think I’m in love with that kid, Desire, don’t you? Well, I’m not.”
“I’m glad you’re not, because—you oughtn’t to be. Why you oughtn’t to be, I can’t tell you.”
“But I never was.”
“Oh, weren’t you?” Teddy shrugged his shoulders.