Penton glanced from me to his wife, from his wife to me, in one look of instinctive inquiry, before he addressed me....
"Well, Johnnie, here you are ... East at last ... and about to become a real literary man."
"He's been here a full hour ... we didn't want to interrupt you—" his wife explained.
"Your work is too important for the world"—I began sincerely and reverently.
Baxter beamed. His being expanded under my worship.
He caught both my hands, friendlily, in his.
"Welcome to Eden," then, introducing, "this is my secretary, Miss Ruth Hazlitt; she's been quite keen to meet you ... we've talked of you a lot ... she knows your poetry and thinks you're a genius, and will some day be recognised as a great poet."
Ruth Hazlitt nodded, shy, took my hand in introduction.
"Darrie, oh, Dar-rie!" called Baxter ... "a Southern society girl, but a mighty good radical already," he explained to me, sotto voce, as we heard sounds of her approach.
Mary Darfield Malcolm came in, in a flimsy dressing gown of yellow, with blue ribbons in it, her hair wet and still done up in a towel. Superbly she trusted to her big eyes of limpid brown, and to the marble-like pallour of her complexion, the twin laughing dimples in her cheeks ... she added her welcome to the others ... easily, with a Southern way of speech that caught each recalcitrant word by the tail and caressed its back as it came out....