“Twenty years younger! and was Mountjoye old, too? Poor Contessa! You and I both, it seems, must cater—and caker—for old men. Oh, Mr. Falcon, when you bite into my modified edition of the Contessa’s ‘love-cake,’ I pray you, fall not in love with me!”
When she had popped her cake into the oven, tossed off Amanda’s apron, and stepped outside to cool her cheeks in the breeze, the sun stood directly over the rose garden and twelve o’clock was ringing from the tower by the river.
“Noon! half my Wonderful Day has gone, and I haven’t even set out on the adventures I planned at nine.” She thought this over for a few moments, and concluded that, so far as this morning was concerned, it had been a question of choice between her own day and Mrs. Lee’s, and that Mrs. Lee’s had won because it was actual—one of age’s realities—and her own was only a dream. Then, reversing all this wisdom, she added hopefully, “But I still have this afternoon!”
She walked across the garden and leaned her elbows on the rough stone wall that formed Villa Rose’s front defense. Portulacca and canary creeper ran over the stone displaying their bright green foliage and little blossoms attractively against the granite gray. Farther along, the wall rose to a man’s height and ragged robins and rose ramblers wantoned over it merrily, always a-hum and a-twitter with bees and wrens.
“That looks like Mr. Andrews,” she thought, surveying a small cart, drawn by a fat, stocky, black pony wending upward. The road was steep and one could not keep travellers in sight for long at a time. She decided to wait until he drew near, in order to give him his invitation for the evening card game.
Forgetting her lilac-bud silk and her Irish lace petticoat; forgetting the blush from the cook stove, which still mantled her modest brow, forgetting that the strains of the gay minuet issuing from her lips, with the words of salutation to herself, were being carried to the ears of the gentleman in the cart; all innocently, she waited.
It was important that he should not pass without seeing her, since he could save her the trouble and delay of telephoning to several of the desired breakfast guests whom he would see on the round of his duties. Mr. Andrews was the treasurer of the Widowers’ Mite Society of St. Jephtha’s, which paid the sexton’s salary, and this was his day for collecting from his associates. Mrs. Mearely, preferring to arrest attention by a gesture rather than by a shout, plucked a rose-bud from the bush nearest her, and threw it; well aimed, it struck the brim of the gentleman’s straw hat and dropped into the cart in front of him. He looked up, startled, and heard a glad young voice chanting:
“Oh, Mr. Andrews! I am waiting for you.”
