“Listen to the lad!” Phœbe was purring cheerily. “He isn’t satisfied to win a boat race, but he must win a woman all in the same day.” Walter tossed his head defiantly and raised the bottle. “If you so much as lift that stuff to your lips, young man,” she cried suddenly, so suddenly as to upset a considerable portion of it on her porch; “if ye even touch it,” she cried, “I’ll not only never marry you but I’ll beat you with this whip till you cry for mercy!” Then when he dropped his arm she laughed softly—burbled, that is!—and coaxed him again. “How do I know I won’t marry you, lad? You must give me time, now. It’s a long while to be together as man an’ wife—ah!” she sighed comically—“it’s that sentimental I am I can’t say the words without it sendin’ me all a-flutter!... Come in, Walter; put that stuff up—no, don’t throw it away! Put it back where you got it. I want you to have it right before you, to make sure you’ve got really done with it. An’ by the same token, me lad, I’ll just hang me little whip up here beside it, to keep it company like!” Her laugh took all the sting out of that remark, but it did not conceal the determination back of the words.
The men would have slipped off, but Phœbe invited them to stay. And she invited them also to help her prepare a fitting supper to celebrate the victory. In a few moments her chatter and laughter filled all the scene and blotted out the ugly episode. And every now and then she would give Walter little pats as she passed him—he made no effort to help with the “party”—and she would whisper startling little things in his ear and set him grinning in spite of himself.
And Jerry? She was still in her walking suit of grey corduroy, and her mood was somewhat of that sombre colour, but the victory of Walter’s boat and the shock made by Walter’s revelations of his relations with Phœbe had served to put a slight glow of warmth into her speech. To Richard she conversed frankly, but with an air of keeping something back.
Later in the evening when in the clatter of voices he managed to tell her that he would go to New York on the morrow, her eyes opened very wide, but she said nothing.
“It is for good,” he tried to smile.
“What are you going to do there?” she asked indifferently.
“Take up my father’s work, if I am able.”
“That’s rather inconsistent, isn’t it?”
“Nothing that one does honestly is inconsistent,” he replied firmly. “I never believed I could do it; but the inward voice calls very loud just now, and I am eager to try myself in this new experience.”
“We shall miss you,” she tried to tell him in a tone of polite sincerity, and she bravely declined to avoid looking at him. Their eyes met squarely. It was a dangerous moment, but she managed it with dramatic success; so much so that while his own eyes had the appearance of a pathetic dog waiting for his biscuit, hers resembled nothing so much as the round staring optics of those old-fashioned French dolls.