“Began it all over again, I suppose.”
This hit so near the truth that Jack jumped, in spite of himself, and then he burst out with a really swear. I couldn’t have been more surprised if your Ma had cussed.
“Damn it, sir, I won’t stand any more of your confounded meddling. Those letters were a piece of outrageous brutality. I’m breaking off with the girls, but I’ve gone about it in a gentler and, I hope, more dignified, way.”
“Jack, I don’t believe any such stuff and guff. You’re tied up to them harder and tighter than ever.”
I could see I’d made a bull’s eye, for Jack began to bluster, but I cut him short with:
“Go to the devil your own way,” and walked out of the club. I reckon that Jack felt mighty disturbed for as much as an hour, but a good dinner took the creases out of his system. He’d found that Miss Moore didn’t intend to go to the Blairs’, and that Miss Curzon had planned to go to a dance with her sister somewheres else, so he calculated on having a clear track for a trial spin with Miss Churchill.
I surprised your Ma a good deal that evening by allowing that I’d go to the Blairs’ myself, for it looked to me as if the finals might be trotted there, and I thought I’d better be around, because, while I didn’t see much chance of getting any sense into Jack’s head, I felt I ought to do what I could on my friendship account with his father.
Jack was talking to Miss Churchill when I came into the room, and he was tending to business so strictly that he didn’t see me bearing down on him from one side of the room, nor Edith Curzon’s sister, Mrs. Dick, a mighty capable young married woman, bearing down on him from the other, nor Miss Curzon, with one of his roses in her hair, watching him from a corner. There must have been a council of war between the sisters that afternoon, and a change of their plans for the evening.
