"Time to dress for dinner," said Ruth from behind the curtain. "I don't see how you do it, Hoddy. It's so stuffy—and all that tobacco smoke!"
He inspected his watch. Half after six. He was astonished. For four hours he had shifted his own troubles to the shoulders of these imaginative characters.
"He called me a wanton, Hoddy. That is what I don't understand."
"There isn't an angel in heaven, Ruth, purer or sweeter than you are. No doubt—because he did not understand you—he thought you had run away with someone. The trader you spoke about: he disliked your father, didn't he? Well, he probably played your father a horrible practical joke."
"Perhaps that was it. I always wondered why he bought my mother's pearls so readily. I am dreadfully sad."
"I'll tell you what. I'll speak to McClintock to-night and see if he won't take us for a junket on The Tigress. Eh? Banging against the old rollers—that'll put some life into us both. Run along while I rig up and get the part in my hair straight."
"If he had only been my father!—McClintock!"
"God didn't standardize human beings, Ruth; no grain of wheat is like another. See the new litter of Mrs. Pig? By George, every one of them looks like the other; and yet each one attacks the source of supply with a squeal and an oof that's entirely different from his brothers' and sisters'. Put on that new dress—the one that's all white. We'll celebrate that check, and let the rest of the world go hang."
"You are very good to me, Hoddy."
Something reached down into his heart and twisted it. But he held the smile until she turned away from the curtain. He dressed mechanically; so many moves this way, so many moves that. The evening breeze came; the bamboo shades on the veranda clicked and rasped; the loose edges of the manuscript curled. To prevent the leaves from blowing about, should a blow develop, he distributed paper weights. Still unconscious of anything he did physically.