“Won’t you sit down?” began Polly Pendleton, more flustered than she had ever been in all her life. “Will you have a little drink?”
He looked at her in astonishment “Surely ye ain’t meanin’ that ye’d take a drink of liquor, Ma’am?” said he.
“Well,” said Polly Pendleton, with a moue, “once in a long while—in case I’m not feeling well, you know! How about yourself? You look rocky.”
He looked in grave contemplation at the half-filled bottle upon the tiny buffet—the glasses which had seen use.
“Ma’am,” said he, “sometimes in my country a man takes a drink of liquor. Sometimes a woman smokes a pipe. But I don’t think I’ll take no drink this mornin’. It ain’t my usual custom.”
Polly seated herself in a deep-cushioned armchair near the window, her half-consumed cigarette still between her fingers. A pleasing enough picture she presented, as, half leaning forward, she sat staring curiously at this apparition of the morning.
“You’re an odd sort!” said she, at length, flinging up a hand nervously. “Well, I’ve not got down to the pipe yet.”
“Say, friend,” she went on suddenly, half apologetically, “I was talking to my partner last night. She said that she thought our act rather broke you up. Of course you know it was all joshing—nothing more. That’s the way we do at those dinner parties—they sort of expect it of us girls, you know. There’s nothing in it, of course. I hope you didn’t mind it?”
“No,” he said quietly, “I didn’t mind. The ways of sin are allurin’, Ma’am.”
“What’s that!” But then she spread out her hands. An awkward silence fell.