“Oh, that’s neither here nor there. As a matter of fact, I’ve been working.”
Working! Packy, the gilded one, with an income to keep him and his among the polo-labourers and golf-toilers!
“But—well, I’ve written I don’t know how many letters to you, Joy—and torn them up. Letters are rotten when you really want to say anything.”
They are distracted by a little girl, her organdy clinging to her in sodden folds, her improbable complexion fast fading to incoherency, as she came limping out of the rain to her mother who, firmly dry, had been standing against a pillar.
“Oh, mother, the rain has shrunk my shoes all up—I can’t hardly walk——”
“No-ra! You were out there, all this time? You’ve always heard about people who didn’t know enough to come in when it rained!”
“That good lady,” said Packy, “has described me complete. Last fall, I didn’t know enough to come in when it rained. I did know a few things, though, Joy. Can you believe that I could never have been such a cad—if I hadn’t been drunk?”
“I—can,” said Joy.
“I’ve thought it all over—I don’t know how many times—and I’ve thought it out. To go in back of the fact that I misjudged you—I misjudged Jerry and Sarah. Because we could act as freely at the apartment as though we were at our club—because they were on their own—and because you were with them, and on your own,—I thought—well, I didn’t quite think so at that—until I was drunk—and then I didn’t think at all.”
Insensibly they had retreated still farther from the crowd, and now stood in a muddy corner quite alone.