I was going to reply that it wasn’t odd if you knew Mr. Porterfield, but I reflected that that perhaps only made it odder. I told my companion briefly who he was—that I had met him in the old Paris days, when I believed for a fleeting hour that I could learn to paint, when I lived with the jeunesse des écoles; and her comment on this was simply: “Well, he had better have come out for her!”
“Perhaps so. She looked to me as she sat there as if, she might change her mind at the last moment.”
“About her marriage?
“About sailing. But she won’t change now.”
Jasper came back, and his mother instantly challenged him. “Well, are you going?”
“Yes, I shall go”—he was finally at peace about it. “I’ve got my telegram.”
“Oh your telegram!”—I ventured a little to jeer.
“That charming girl’s your telegram.”
He gave me a look, but in the dusk I couldn’t make out very well what it conveyed. Then he bent over his mother, kissing her. “My news isn’t particularly satisfactory. I’m going for you.”
“Oh you humbug!” she replied. But she was of course delighted.