“Wayne hasn’t much appetite,” said Judith, eating away with relish. “He dislikes the people at our table—sometimes I think that’s why he bolts his food and gets off in such a hurry. By the way, Juliet, are you and Tony coming in to the Reardons’ to-night? Of course you are.”
“I suppose we must,” admitted Juliet with reluctance. “We have refused a good many things since we’ve been here, but I did promise Mrs. Reardon we would try to come to-night.”
The little repast over, Judith offered, with well simulated warmth, to help her friend with the after work. But Juliet would have none of her. She sent her guest out into a hammock under the trees, and despatched the business of putting the little kitchen to rights with the celerity of one who means to have done with it.
In the middle of the June afternoon Judith awoke from a nap in the hammock to find her hostess standing laughing beside her, fresh in a thin gown of flowered dimity.
“Well,” yawned Judith, heavily, “I must have gone off to sleep. I was tired—I am tireder. This is a fatiguing sort of weather—don’t you think so? But you don’t look it. And after all that work I found you in! Why aren’t you used up? It kills me to do things in the heat.”
Juliet dropped a big blue denim pillow on the ground and sat down upon it in a flutter of dimity. She lifted a smiling face and said with spirit:
“Last summer I could walk miles over a golf course twice a day and not mind it in the least. The year before I was most of the time on the river, rowing till I was as strong as a girl could be. I’ve had gymnasium work and fencing lessons and have been brought up to keep myself in perfect trim by my baths and exercise. What frail thing am I that a little housework should use me up?”
“Yes—I know—you always did go in for that sort of thing,” reflected Judith, eyeing her companion’s fresh colour and bright eyes. “I suppose I ought, but I never cared for it—I don’t mean the baths and all that—of course any self-respecting woman adores warm baths. I don’t like the cold plunges and showers you always add on.”
“Then don’t expect the results.”
“It isn’t everybody who has your energetic temperament. I hate golf, despise tennis, never rowed a stroke in my life, and could no more keep house as you are doing than I could fly.”