“Thanks.... Where is Walter?” he asked.
“He and Jawn are sailing the new boat.” She laughed at some memory of their setting forth. That laugh was a brave attempt to conceal her worry over the Wells’ affairs. “Jawn’s a bright lad, he is; but he—he ought to have the whip, too.”
“I believe you,” Richard assented. “Was he nice and vulgar to you to-day? Jawn loves to be vulgar.”
“I’m no judge of such things,” she parried; “it takes all my time just to enjoy them.”
“Young woman,” he told her in his smiling superior way, “that’s a mighty fine formula to go through life on. Why be always judging and valuing? One needs all the time just to enjoy.”
Silence fell between them. Hovering over the pleasant tea-table was the memory of the recent ugly scene and beyond that the fate of the Wells family.
“I believe you would!” Phœbe remarked in answer to one of her own thoughts.
“Perhaps.” He sipped his tea contentedly, looked down the Lake and waited.
“If the Big House should go to smash,” she explained finally, “I believe you would loaf about enjoyin’ yourself with what was left in the refrigerator and then tramp off without caring a——”
She left the sentence unfinished.