The flatness of it left all three stranded in uncomfortable silence. The thought in each mind of how much might be said, were one of the others away, kept them from saying anything through an interminable moment that merged unexpectedly into a common interest. It centered in a single figure lounging across the lawn from the breakfast-room.
Thair came slowly, his chin in the air, a dead cigarette in his fingers. Julia frowned. Mrs. Budd rustled. Thair strolled, stopping to pluck an oleander, then tossing it away.
Mrs. Budd struggled with the situation. She half turned to Longacre. Her eyes followed the fennel path. Again she opened her lips, with the odd effect of making her seemingly the author of Thair’s dilatory drawl.
“I am an agitator,” he announced at large, “a disturber of the existing state of affairs.” His amused eyes lingered a moment on Julia’s anticipatory stare, on Longacre’s air of ready-for-anything. He addressed himself exclusively to Mrs. Budd. “Mrs. Essington has been wondering whether this was the morning you were going to show her—whatever it was about the Japanese chrysanthemum.”
“Oh!” Mrs. Budd clapped her hand to her cheek. It was a gesture she had when suddenly remembering.
“That’s all I know—what she said.” Thair was deliberate. “She was coming out, but I appointed myself ambassador.”
“Oh, why, I—” Mrs. Budd began. The good lady was fairly cornered.
“Oh, then,” she said, with a last hope, “I’ll leave you three young people here together.”
“But,” Thair protested, “I am curious myself to know what it is about the what’s-its-name chrysanthemum.”
She was already in full retreat for the house—hair, skirts, sleeves all a-flutter. The look she gave him over her shoulder was despair; but he, imperturbable, dropped into her wake, tossing his dead cigarette into the oleanders.