XIII.—Smoke and Talk
At the house there remained for the guests an hour before the fire, where Juliet brought in something hot and sweet and sour and spicy, which tasted delicious and brought her a shower of compliments while they drank a friendly draught to her. When she had left them, standing in an admiring group on the hearth-rug and wishing her happy dreams, they settled into luxurious positions of ease before the fire—a fire in the last stages of red comfort before it dies into a smoulder of torrid ashes.
“Anthony Robeson,” said Wayne Carey, regarding the andirons fixedly over his bed-time pipe, “you’re a happy man.”
Anthony laughed contentedly. He had thrown himself down upon the hearth-rug with his head on a pillow pulled from the settle, and lay flat on his back with his hands clasped behind his neck. It was an attitude deeply expressive of masculine comfort.
“You’re exactly right,” said he. “And you would be the same if you would give up living in that infernal boarding-house. What do you want to fool with your first year of married life like that for? You told me that Judith was bowled over by our wedding, and was ready to go in for this sort of thing with a will.”
“I know it,” admitted Carey, “but”—he spoke hesitatingly—“we couldn’t seem to find this sort of thing. You had corralled all there was.”
“Nonsense.”
“You had. Everything we looked at was so old and mouldy, or so new and inartistic, or so high-priced, or so far away—well, we couldn’t seem to get at it, so we said we’d board a while and wait until we could look around.”
“How does it work?”
“Why, I suppose it works very well,” said Carey cautiously. “Judith seems contented. We have as good meals as the average in such houses, and the people are rather a nice lot. We’re invited around quite a good deal, and Judith likes that. I ought to like it better than I do, somehow. I’m so confoundedly tired when I get home nights I can’t help thinking of you and Juliet here in this jolly room. There’s an abominable blue and yellow wall-paper on our sitting-room—and it has a way of appearing to turn seasick in the evening under the electrics. Sometimes I think it’s that that makes me feel——”