There came a Saturday morning, toward the end of May, which brought no letter from Rodney, and she stayed in all day, from one delivery to the next, waiting for it. She tried to disguise her excitement over its failure to arrive, as a fear lest something might have gone wrong with him or with the twins, but did not succeed. If anything had gone wrong she knew she'd have heard. The thing that kept clutching at her heart was hope. The hope that the letter wouldn't come at all; that there'd be a telephone call instead—and Rodney's voice.
The telephone did ring just before noon, but the voice was Galbraith's. He wanted to know if she wouldn't come over to his Long Island farm the following morning and spend the day.
She had visited the place two or three times and had always enjoyed it immensely there. It wasn't much of a farm, but there was a delightful old Revolutionary farmhouse on it, with ceilings seven feet high and casement windows, and the floors of all the rooms on different levels; and Galbraith, there, was always quite at his best. His sister and her husband, whom he had brought over from England when he bought the place, ran it for him. They were the simplest sort of peasant people who had hardly stirred from their little Surrey hamlet until that meteoric brother of theirs had summoned them on their breath-taking voyage to America, and for whom now, on this little Long Island farm, New York might have been almost as far away as London. Mrs. Flaxman did all the work of the house and farmyard without the aid of a servant, and her husband raised vegetables for the New York market.
What the pair really thought of the life John Galbraith led, or of the guests he sometimes brought out for week-end visits, no one knew. But the pleasant sort of homely hospitality one always found there was extremely attractive to Rose, and with Rodney's regular Saturday letter at hand she'd have accepted the invitation eagerly. As it was, she answered almost shortly that she couldn't come. Then, contrite, she hastened to dilute her refusal with an elaboration of regrets and hastily contrived reasons.
"All right," he said good-humoredly, "I shan't ask any one else, but if you happen to change your mind call me on the phone in the morning. Tell me what train you're coming down on and I'll meet you."
She didn't expect to change her mind, but a phonograph did it for her. This instrument was domesticated across the court somewhere—she had never bothered to discover just which pair of windows the sound of it issued from—and it was addicted to fox-trots, comic recitations in negro dialect, and the melodies of Mr. Irving Berlin. It was jolly and companionable and Rose regarded it as a friend. But on this Saturday night, perversely enough, perhaps because its master was in Pittsburgh on a business trip and hadn't come home as expected, the thing turned sentimental. It sang I'm on My Way to Mandalay, under the impression that Mandalay was an island somewhere. It played The Rosary, done as a solo on the cornet; and over and over again it sang, with the thickest, sirupiest sentiment that John McCormack at his best is capable of,
"Just a little love, a li—ttle kiss,
Just an hour that holds a world of bliss,
Eyes that tremble like the stars above me,
And the little word that says you love me."