Mrs. Carteret was propped among the cushions of a divan with a book. Her daughter occupied the undivided half of a tete-a-tete chair with a blond athlete in a clerical coat and a reversed collar. Miss Virginia was sitting alone at a window, but she rose and came to greet the visitor.
“How good of you to take pity on us!” she said, giving him her hand. Then she put him at one with the others: “Aunt Martha you have met; also Cousin Bessie. Let me present you to Mr. Calvert: Cousin Billy, this is Mr. Adams, who is responsible in a way for many of my Boston-learned gaucheries.”
Aunt Martha closed the book on her finger. “My dear Virginia!” she protested in mild deprecation; and Adams laughed and shook hands with the Reverend William Calvert and made Virginia's peace all in the same breath.
“Don't apologize for Miss Virginia, Mrs. Carteret. We were very good friends in Boston, chiefly, I think, because I never objected when she wanted to—er—to take a rise out of me.” Then to Virginia: “I hope I don't intrude?”
“Not in the least. Didn't I just say you were good to come? Uncle Somerville tells us we are passing through the famous Golden Belt,—whatever that may be,—and recommends an easy-chair and a window. But I haven't seen anything but stubble-fields—dismally wet stubble-fields at that. Won't you sit down and help me watch them go by?”
Adams placed a chair for her and found one for himself.
“'Uncle Somerville'—am I to have the pleasure of meeting Mr. Somerville Darrah?”
Miss Virginia's laugh was non-committal.
“Quien sabe?” she queried, airing her one Westernism before she was fairly in the longitude of it. “Uncle Somerville is a law unto himself. He had a lot of telegrams and things at Kansas City, and he is locked in his den with Mr. Jastrow, dictating answers by the dozen, I suppose.”
“Oh, these industry colonels!” said Adams. “Don't their toilings make you ache in sheer sympathy sometimes?”