“We’ve got lamb chops tonight,” said Anna, with whimsical relevance, “and fresh strawberry ice-cream. And pheasants are awfully indigestible, anyway.”
Henry returned her stare. “What have you been doing all the afternoon––reading Marcus Aurelius?”
“No, I haven’t been reading anything at all. I tidied up the kitchen. What happened to you?”
There were two different ways of presenting 144 the narrative, and Henry chose the second. He made it a travesty: and all the time that he was talking, Anna continued to gaze at him in that same curious, thoughtful fashion, as if she were noting, for the first time, a subtle variation in his character.
“And––aren’t you even mad?” she demanded. “I thought you’d be furious. I thought you’d be tearing your hair and––and everything.”
Henry laughed explosively. “Impatience, as I’ve pointed out so often to Aunt Mirabelle, dries the blood more than age or sorrow. Yes, I’m mad, but I’ve put it on ice. I’m trying to work out some scheme to keep us in the running, and not give Mix too good an excuse to hoot at us. No––they say it’s darkest just before the dawn, so I’m trying to fix it so we’ll be sitting on the front steps to see the sunrise. Only so far I haven’t had a mortal thought.”
“As a matter of fact,” she confided, “I loathed the idea of our running the Orpheum on Sundays. Didn’t you?”
“Naturally. Also on Thursdays, Saturdays, Mondays, Fridays, Wednesdays and Tuesdays. 145 But Sundays did sort of burrow a little further under my tough hide. And you know that’s quite an admission for anybody that was brought up by Aunt Mirabelle.” He smiled in reminiscence. “She used to make virtue so darned scaly and repulsive that it’s a wonder I’ve got a moral left. As it is, my conscience may be all corrugated like a raisin, but I’m almost glad we can’t run Sundays. That is, I would be if my last remaining moral weren’t going to be so expensive.”
“Don’t you think they’ll probably change that ordinance now, though? Don’t you think people will insist on it? After today?”
“Guess work,” said Henry. “Pure guesswork. But my guess is that we’re ditched.”