It came home to Innes for the hundredth time, the surprise of such a meal in that desert. A few years ago, and what had a meal been? She threw the credit of the little lunch to sulky Tom Hardin lying on the portière-covered couch, his ugly lower lip outthrust against an unsmiling vision. It was Tom, Tom and his brave men, the sturdy engineers, the dauntless surveyors, the Indians who had dug the canals, those were the ones who had spread that pretty table, not the buxom little woman darting about in pink gingham.
“Is it because I don’t like her?” she mused, her eyes on the pictures in the style-book which had just come in that morning. Certainly Gerty did have the patience of a saint with Tom’s humors. If she would only lose that set look of martyrdom! It was not for an outsider to judge between a husband and wife, even if the man were her own brother. She could not put her finger on the germ of their painful scenes; she shrank from the recollection of Tom’s temper; his coarse streak, the Gingg fiber, her own mother had called it. Tom was rough, but she loved him. Why was it she was sure that Gerty did not love her husband? Yet there was the distrust, as fixed and as unjust perhaps as the suspicion of Gerty’s little mysteries.
She said aloud: “This is your last day. My week begins to-morrow.”
Mrs. Hardin adjusted a precise napkin before she spoke.
“I think I will keep the reins for a month this time.” Her words were reflective, as though the thought were new. “I get my hand in just as I stop. I will be running out for my visit in a few weeks. It will be only fair for me to do it as long as I can.”
Again the girl had a sense of subtlety. Whenever Gerty put on that air of childish confidential deliberation, she hunted for the plot. This was not far to seek. Her sister-in-law was passing out the hot season to her.
“It’s all ready.” Gerty’s glance was winging, bird-like, over the table. Nothing had been forgotten. She gave a little sigh of esthetic satisfaction. Hardin misinterpreted it.
“I ought to be able to keep a servant for her.” It was like him to have forgotten the Lawrence days; he was never free of the sense of obligation to the dainty little woman who was born, he felt, for the purple. There was nothing too good for Gerty. He felt her unspoken disappointments; her deprivations. “Of course, she can have no respect for me. I’m a failure.”
“Doesn’t this give you an appetite?” demanded Innes heartily. “And I’m to be a lady for three more weeks.” The remark was thoughtless. A bright flush spread over Gerty’s face. She caught an allusion to her origin.
Innes saw the blush and remembered the boarding-house. She could think of nothing to say. The three relatives sat down to that most uncomfortable travesty, a social meal where sociability is lacking. Innes said it had been a pleasant morning. Gerty thought it had been hot. And then there was silence again.