When it was over, and the car was gliding quietly over the road home, she slid down snugly in the seat like a satisfied child, and he thought, with large plans for the future, how little it took to make her happy. He didn’t know, of course, that the satisfaction of her evening had begun when her glasses caught the attention of a very desirable acquaintance whose interest of late seemed to require some stimulation. If she had had all gifts of the gods at her command, nothing, she reflected, could be more effective than to be seen with Billy with his good looks and the unaccountable impression he gave of “being somebody.” None of her friends would know who he was, of course, and she didn’t intend that
they ever should know. Altogether she had spent a very profitable evening. Then there was something very gratifying about Billy’s company; he gave so much and asked so little. She was accustomed to lavish attention from other men, but none of them ever offered her the deference of a saint and the indulgence of an irresponsible child. It was an understood part of their social code that she work her resources to the limit to be entertaining, that she make the most of her beauty, that she play the game for what it was worth. With this she had an easier trick of her own—to set them off against each other through the gentle art of inviting opposition.
The balmy softness of the evening had gone and the air held the chill of midnight. The lights were out in the houses except an occasional night-burning lamp turned low in a kitchen. They saw one bent, white-bearded old man with a lantern coming from the barn, presumably making his anxious nightly rounds to the sheep-fold during lambing time. Marjorie roused from her reverie and shivered a little.
“How terribly lonesome,” she said. “I don’t know how they stand it to live here all the time, but I suppose some people are made for that sort of thing.”
“I suppose so. I’d rather farm than anything else.”
“You would? Of course you mean to manage
a farm, or to advise other people like you’re doing now. That’s different.”
Billy smiled.
“You don’t advise people much at this job,” he said. “You just try to get the community in line with whatever service the Department of Agriculture (which is their own) has to give them.” And then because he didn’t want her to have any illusions as to the dignity of his work he outlined in detail some of its humblest phases.
“How very funny,” she laughed. “You must be very much amused sometimes, but it must be an awful bore, too, dealing with that class of people day after day. Someone’s generally at home at our house. I know you’d like Dad and I hope we’ll see heaps of you.”