“What?” he cried, and was about to explain, but she stopped him.
“Richard must make his own explanations,” she declared. “It would seem like probing; and he is our guest, you know.”
She tried to get him to talk about Walter, but he was very frank in saying that that was Richard’s case.
“But he asked you to come here solely to consult you about Walter.”
It might be, Jawn agreed; but he was on a vacation. It was all guess-work anyway, he assured her; and any man’s guess was as good as another’s. When Richard got going on a thing he could be guaranteed to put genius into it.
The young lady before him appealed more to his interest; and he was not slow in indicating as much. He quoted what he could remember of Richard’s letter to prove that it was Jerry and not Walter that had induced him to come to “Red Jacket.” There was enough chaffing in his tone to cover up the bluntness of his statements, but there was no doubt as to his meaning.
There are many ways to meet this sort of gallantry. Some women affect indifference and grow stupidly reserved—they are the ones hit hardest!—and some simper and pretend that they do not understand; but a wiser group admit everything and bring the game right out in the open, where it quickly perishes for lack of pursuit.
“That was quite right of Richard,” Jerry returned. “Naturally he would recommend me first, but at that time, you know, he had not seen Phœbe Norris.” She explained Phœbe’s widowhood and enlarged upon her qualities. “Phœbe will just suit you,” she concluded, and her good-humoured tone turned all Jawn’s blarneying back on him and made Jerry herself more reserved and unapproachable than ever.
Jawn made a wry face.
“Never!” he whispered, like a stage-aside. “There’s nothing mysterious and romantic in Phœbe to me. We Irish understand one another too well. I know every twist in her head, and she’s on to me, every curve of me. All my charms would be jokes to her; it would be carrying coals to Newcastle with a vengeance. No! the Irish get along best with aliens. In Ireland my father was a subservient peat digger; in America he became instantly an eccentric genius, a man of parts, a West Side statesman and diplomat. The big-wigs in politics consult him now, and his sayings are quoted by the newspaper ‘columnists’; in Ireland he was just like thousands of others. No! Phœbe and I suspect each other already. The feud is on.”