"Gilbert Palgrave be damned. You're coming home, I tell you, if I have to carry you out."
She laughed. This was a new Marty, a high-handed, fiery Marty—one who must not be encouraged. "Are you often like this?" she asked.
"Be careful. I've had enough, and if you don't want me to smash this place up and cause a riot, you'll do what I tell you."
Her eyes flashed back at him, and two angry spots of color came into her cheeks. He was out of control. She realized that. She had never in her life seen any one so out of control—unaccountable as she found it. That he would smash up the place and cause a riot she knew instinctively. She put up no further opposition. If anything were to be avoided, it was a scene, and in her mind's eye she could see herself being carried out by this plunging boy, with a yard of stocking showing and the laughter of every one ringing in her ears. No, no, not that! She began to look for Palgrave, with her mind all alert and full of a mischievous desire to turn the tables on Martin. He must be shown quickly that if any one gave orders, she did.
He danced her to the edge of the floor, led her panting through the tables to the foot of the stairs and with his hand grasping her arm like a vice, guided her up to the place where ladies left their wraps.
"We're going home," he said, "to have things out. I'll wait here." Then he called a boy and told him to get his hat and coat and gave him his check.
Five minutes later, in pulsating silence, both of them angry and inarticulate, they stood in the street waiting for a taxi. The soft air touched their hot faces with a refreshing finger. Hardly any one who saw that slip of a girl and that square-shouldered boy with his unlined face would have imagined that they could be anything but brother and sister. The marriage of babies! Was there no single apostle of common sense in all the country—a country so gloriously free that it granted licenses to every foolishness without a qualm?
Palgrave was standing on the curb, scowling. His car moved up, and the porter went forward to open the door. As quick as lightning, Joan saw her chance to put Martin into his place and evade an argument. Wasn't she out of that old country cage at last? Couldn't she revel in free flight without being called to order and treated like a school-girl, at last? What fun to use Palgrave to show Martin her spirit!
She touched him on the arm and looked up at him with dancing eyes and a teasing smile. "Not this time, Marty," she said, and was across the sidewalk in a bound. "Quick," she said to Palgrave. "Quick!" And he, catching the idea with something more than amusement, sprang into the car after her, and away they went.
A duet of laughter hung briefly in the air.