“Where is your home, Mr. King?” she asked.
“Ah, how shall I answer?” he cried in mock consternation. “I’m afraid I’ve become a kind of permanent tramp—travelling a lot and—well, jogging about generally.”
“Abroad?” she asked, clasping her hands but making otherwise a valiant effort not to be overcome with awe.
“Pretty much all over the globe,” he admitted. “I’ve whistled up the sun sitting astride the pyramids; I’ve strummed a ukulele on the beach at Waikiki; I’ve dabbled a bit at Monte Carlo; I’ve sipped tea with little doll-like geisha girls in Yokohama. What haven’t I done, and where haven’t I been?” He looked honestly almost appalled at his own wealth of experience; and she hung on his words, her face responsive to the thrill in her heart.
A little later on they were speaking of the earthquake and how the city had developed out of calamity. And then, since she had quoted, in this connection, something her father had said, and since they were on the subject of business generally Mr. King suggested: “May I ask what your father’s business is?”
And Stella—unhappy Stella. She ran her fingers nervously along the feathers of the fan in her lap, and was silent for just a moment, the old rebellion, impotent but hot, bringing its flush to her face. Then slowly she raised her eyes to his, unexpectedly found in them the inspiration she had missed elsewhere, and replied quite frankly, with the same sort of candour that had slipped in more than once already: “My father’s business is harness.”
Did he hear a growl? Was he in the wrong pew? Destiny seemed to hold her breath. But if there was any growl now it was so faint as to recommend no drastic alarums and excursions. “Harness—ah.” That was all. And he went on in the same gracefully adjusted tone: “Perhaps not quite so much demand, but still an important item.” And he added, breaking into the more general field the topic seemed prompting: “I like a good horse. I suppose you ride, Miss Meade?”
“Oh—occasionally,” she replied, her face still slightly flushed with suppressed rebellion, but smiling with that attempt at archness she told herself the situation required. “Occasionally”—yet what she really meant was a long time ago; for it was highly possible the staid old family horse, used only for driving now, might expire of amazement were Stella to take a notion to mount.
“It would give me ever so much pleasure if I might call. May I?” He looked very worldly and pleading over the conventional request.