“You know I don’t. And I’ll come to Wild Acres any other week-end you ask me, with joy. I think your mother is too lovely, to want me. I couldn’t take my eyes from her at the Clare exhibition. I think I like her already without knowing her, Hugh. But you will come to Fernly? Say you will?”
Her eyes were wistful and pleading. And so, oddly enough, Hugh found himself yielding to Brenda Loring’s persuasions, where Joan’s invisible but encouraging beckon had failed. However, if he had allowed himself to follow his own desires, he would have preferred Wild Acres as a place to spend any Saturday and Sunday. Yes. Even if Ariel must always be in the next room, writing letters to Glenn.
Chapter XXVI
“And apropos of our little friend Brenda,” Joan murmured, sifting sand in rhythmical waves through her fingers, “I’m glad she amuses you so much, Hugh dear. If you’d played around with more girls like her, taken out more time for play and amusing companionships, I mean, you’d have been a lot better off. Brenda wakes you up. Any one can see. And waked up—you are delightful, Hugh. All the women here like you tremendously. And the men, well, they’d like you anyway. These men. They’d respect the really clever side of you, the business side, having most of them come the same road. I did better than I knew when I wheedled Laura into inviting you. For really, I was selfishly thinking only of myself, as usual.”
Laura was Mrs. Ronald Hunt-Smith, and Joan and Hugh were out on the swimming beach at Fernly, lingering on after the Sunday morning’s general swimming meet in order to be together. Joan was wearing a sea-green beach cape draped about her shoulders and a wide beach hat. But Hugh was sprawled in the sun, unprotected, getting his first tan of the season.
“Brenda’s all right,” Hugh replied nonchalantly. “Every day in every way I like her better and better. She’s refreshing. And she wears.”
“Yes. And I’m glad I’ve been able to help her as much as I have. Laura is thinking of redecorating her Riverside house. Or she was thinking of it before this party. Now she has definitely decided to do it. Told me so last night. So you see I still think of Brenda and for her.”
“Yes. She owes you this invitation as much as I do, then? Well, she’d be grateful if she knew. She’s a loyal soul, Brenda.”
“But of course she owes it to me! Brenda has done some lovely places, her reputation’s grown tremendously. But after all—Laura Hunt-Smith! I suppose you can’t know what that means! But to be honest, my dear boy, it wasn’t Brenda’s career I was thinking of this time. Not that alone, anyway. I wanted to see you two together. Every one else seems to have been seeing you together, and to have jumped to conclusions. I wanted to see for myself, that was all.”
She looked at him, smiling, but an open gay smile, not enigmatical.