Andy flung an obliging arm about the waist of each and gave each armful a little squeeze. “Happy ain’t the word.” And indeed it scarcely seemed to cover the situation; for there stood Parthy viewing the three entwined, and as she stood she seemed to grow visibly taller, broader, more ominous, like a menacing cloud. Andy’s expression was a protean thing in which bravado and apprehension battled.
Magnolia had recognized them at once as the pretty young woman in the rose-trimmed hat and the dark woman who had told her not to smile too often that day when, in company with the sloppy young man, they had passed the Hawks house, laughing and chatting and spitting cherry stones idly and comfortably into the dust of the village street. So she now took a step forward from behind her mother’s voluminous skirts and made a little tentative gesture with one hand toward the older woman. And that lively female at once said, “Why, bless me! Look, Elly! It’s the little girl!”
Elly looked. “What little girl?”
“The little girl with the smile.” And at that, quite without premeditation, and to her own surprise, Magnolia ran to her and put her hand in hers and looked up into her strange ravaged face and smiled. “There!” exclaimed the woman, exactly as she had done that first time.
“Maggie Hawks!” came the voice.
And, “Oh, my God!” exclaimed the one called Elly, “it’s the——” sensed something dangerous in the air, laughed, and stopped short.
Andy extricated himself from his physical entanglements and attempted to do likewise with the social snarl that now held them all.
“Meet my wife Mrs. Hawks. Parthy, this is Julie Dozier, female half of our general business team and one of the finest actresses on the river besides being as nice a little lady as you’d meet in a month of Sundays. . . . This here little beauty is Elly Chipley—Lenore La Verne on the bills. Our ingénue lead and a favourite from Duluth to New Orleans. . . . Where’s Doc?”
At which, with true dramatic instinct, Doc appeared scrambling down the cinder path toward the boat; leaped across the gangplank, poised on one toe, spread his arms and carolled, “Tra-da!” A hard-visaged man of about fifty-five, yet with kindness, too, written there; the deep-furrowed, sad-eyed ageless face of the circus shillaber and showman.
“Girls say you drove over. Must be flush with your spondulicks, Doc. . . . Parthy, meet Doc. He’s got another name, I guess, but nobody’s ever used it. Doc’s enough for anybody on the river. Doc goes ahead of the show and bills us and does the dirty work, don’t you, Doc?”