As she went up the steps to the door, I noticed that she had fine, neat ankles and I divined shapely limbs. While she was taking off her light cloak and hat, the lifting of her arms stretched her bodice and showed small round breasts: already my blood was lava and my mouth parched with desire.
“You look at me strangely!” she said swinging round from the long mirror with a challenge on her parted lips. I made some inane remark: I couldn’t trust myself to speak frankly; but natural sympathy drew us together. I told her I was going to be a student and she wanted to know whether I could dance: I told her I could not, and she promised to teach me: “Lily Robins, a neighbor’s girl, will play for us any afternoon. Do you know the steps?” she went on and when I said “No”: she got up from the sofa, held up her dress and showed me the three polka steps which she said were the waltz steps too, only taken on a glide. “What pretty ankles! you have”, I ventured; but she appeared not to hear me. We sat on and on and I learned that she was very lonely: Mr. Mayhew away every night and nearly all day and nothing to do in that little dead-and-alive place. “Will you let me come in for a talk sometimes?” I asked: “Whenever you wish”, was her answer. As I rose to go and we were standing opposite to each other by the door, I said: “You know, Mrs. Mayhew, in Europe when a man brings a pretty woman home, she rewards him with a kiss—”
“Really?” she scoffed, smiling, “That’s not a custom here.”
“Are you less generous than they are?” I asked and the next moment I had taken her face in my hands and kissed her on the lips. She put her hands on my shoulders and left her eyes on mine: “We’re going to be friends”, she said, “I felt it when I saw you: don’t stay away too long!”
“Will you see me tomorrow afternoon?” I asked: “I want that dance lesson!” “Surely” she replied, “I’ll tell Lily in the morning.” And once more our hands met: I tried to draw her to me for another kiss; but she held back with a smiling—“tomorrow afternoon!” “Tell me your name”, I begged, “so that I may think of it.” “Lorna” she replied, “you funny boy!” and I went my way with pulses hammering, blood aflame and hope in my heart.
Next morning I called again upon Smith; but the pretty servant, “Rose”, she said her name was, told me that he was nearly always out at Judge Stevens’ “five or six miles out,” she thought it was; “they always come for him in a buggy”, she added. So I said I’d write and make an appointment and I did write and asked him to let me see him next morning.
That same morning Willie recommended to me a pension kept by a Mrs. Gregory, an Englishwoman, the wife of an old Baptist clergyman, who would take good care of me for four dollars a week. Immediately I went with him to see her and was delighted to find that she lived only about a hundred yards from Mrs. Mayhew on the opposite side of the street. Mrs. Gregory was a large, motherly woman evidently a lady, who had founded this boardinghouse to provide for a rather feckless husband and two children, a big pretty girl, Kate and a lad, a couple of years younger. Mrs. Gregory was delighted with my English accent, I believe, and showed me special favor at once by giving me a large outside room with its own entrance and steps into the garden.
In an hour I had paid my bill at the Eldridge House and had moved in: I showed a shred of prudence by making Willie promise Mrs. Gregory that he would turn up each Saturday with the five dollars for my board; the dollar extra was for the big room.
In due course I shall tell how he kept his promise and discharged his debt to me. For the moment everything was easily, happily settled. I went out and ordered a decent suit of ordinary tweeds and dressed myself up in my best blue suit to call upon Mrs. Mayhew after lunch. The clock crawled but on the stroke of three, I was at her door: a colored maid admitted me.
“Mrs. Mayhew”, she said in her pretty singing voice, “will be down right soon: I’ll go call Miss Lily.”