Now the dialogue down there at the gate, where this Culpepper towered above the slight young person of Selina, was this:
From him: "Expecting me to dinner? This thing mustn't come to be a nuisance."
"Yes. Why, of course. Auntie would never get over it if you didn't come. It's a serious matter to her, this compact with Cousin Maria. Culpepper?"
"Yes?"
His eyes were a bold blue, his lashes and heavy brows and his hair black. He looked even blatantly ready for the fight with life.
"How—or when did it come to you that you'd have to go to work? Did it just dawn on you sometime? Or did somebody, Cousin Maria for instance, tell you?"
"I haven't gone yet; don't give me undue credit." Culpepper gave that almost insolently contented laugh of his. "I'm making ready. I didn't do so badly at college and now I'm making law school. There wasn't any coming to know about it. I just knew. Every boy knows. He's getting ready from the start."
"I went to-day and asked for a position to teach and got it. I start to-morrow!"
"The devil you—Selina, it slipped out, forgive it. So that's why you wanted to know? I see. Felt you had to?"
She nodded. If a lump requiring to be swallowed was perceptible, she was more willing for Culpepper to suspect than most people. She knew him better, and, too, he was the sort, for all his matter-of-factness, that understands. Or she thought so then.