“You’re not like most of your sex,” said Paul. “Down in Mexico, when I was there on the Brighton job, I heard a Spanish proverb: ‘If a pretty woman smiles, some purse is shedding tears.’”
The two men exchanged laughing glances of understanding. Lydia frowned. “That is hateful—and horrid—and a lie!” she cried energetically, finding that they paid no attention to her protest.
“I didn’t invent it,” Paul exonerated himself lightly.
“But you laughed at it—you think it’s so—you—” She was trembling in a sudden resentment at once inexplicable and amusing to the other two.
“Highty-tighty! you little spitfire!” cried her father, laughing. “I see your finish, my boy!”
“Good gracious, Lydia, how you do fly at a man! I take it back. I take it back.” Paul looked admiringly at his pretty sweetheart’s flashing eyes and crimson cheeks as he spoke.
She turned away and picked up her cloak without speaking.
“To tell the truth,” said Paul, going on with the conversation as though it had not been interrupted, and addressing his father-in-law-to-be, “every penny I can rake and scrape is going into the house. Lydia’s such a sensible little thing I knew she’d think it better to have something permanent than an ocean of orchids and candy now. Besides, such a belle as she is gets them from everybody else.”
Mrs. Emery often pointed out to Lydia’s inexperience that it was rare to see a man so magnanimously free from jealousy as her fiancé.
“The architect and I were going over it to-day,” the young electrician went on, “and I decided, seeing this new contract means such a lot, that I would have the panels in the hall carved, after all—of course if you agree,” he turned to Lydia, but went on without waiting for an answer. “The effect will be much handsomer—will go with the rest of the house better.”