“Do you remember me, Rickard?”
If Hardin recognized a difficult situation, he did not betray it. It was a man Rickard did not know who shook him warmly by the hand, and said that indeed he had not forgotten him.
“I’ve been expecting you. My wife, Mr. Rickard, and my sister.”
“Why, what are you thinking of, Tom? To introduce Mr. Rickard! I introduced you to each other, years ago!” Gerty’s cheeks were red. Her bright eyes were darting from one to the other. “You knew he was coming, and did not tell me?”
“You were at the Improvement Club when the telegram came,” put in Innes Hardin, without looking at Rickard. No trace of the Tucson cordiality in that proud little face! No acknowledgment that they had met at the Marshalls’!
“Oh, you telegraphed to us?” The blond arch smile had not aged. “That was friendly and nice.”
Rickard had not been self-conscious for many a year. He did not know what to say. He turned from her upturned face to the others. Innes Hardin was staring out of the window, over the heads of several crowded tables; Hardin was gazing at his plate. Rickard decided that he would get out of this before Gerty discovered that it was neither “friendly nor nice.”
“If I had known that you were here, I would have insisted on your dining with us, in our tent. For it’s terrible, here, isn’t it?” She flashed at him the look he remembered so vividly, the childish coquettish appeal. “We dine at home, till it becomes tiresome, and then we come foraging for variety. But you must come to us, say Thursday. Is that right for you? We should love it.”
Still those two averted faces. Rickard said Thursday, as he was bidden, and got back to his table, wondering why in thunder he had let Marshall persuade him to take this job.
Hardin waited a scant minute to protest: “What possessed you to ask him to dinner?”