“Which is not flattering to the rest of the company,” Graham smiled.
“Which makes her such good company whenever she is in company,” Ernestine retorted.
The driftage through the Big House was decreasing. A few guests, on business or friendship, continued to come, but more departed. Under Oh Joy and his Chinese staff the Big House ran so frictionlessly and so perfectly, that entertainment of guests seemed little part of the host’s duties. The guests largely entertained themselves and one another.
Dick rarely appeared, even for a moment, until lunch, and Paula, now carrying out her seclusion program, never appeared before dinner.
“Rest cure,” Dick laughed one noon, and challenged Graham to a tournament with boxing gloves, single-sticks, and foils.
“And now’s the time,” he told Graham, as they breathed between bouts, “for you to tackle your book. I’m only one of the many who are looking forward to reading it, and I’m looking forward hard. Got a letter from Havely yesterday—he mentioned it, and wondered how far along you were.”
So Graham, in his tower room, arranged his notes and photographs, schemed out the work, and plunged into the opening chapters. So immersed did he become that his nascent interest in Paula might have languished, had it not been for meeting her each evening at dinner. Then, too, until Ernestine and Lute left for Santa Barbara, there were afternoon swims and rides and motor trips to the pastures of the Miramar Hills and the upland ranges of the Anselmo Mountains. Other trips they made, sometimes accompanied by Dick, to his great dredgers working in the Sacramento basin, or his dam-building on the Little Coyote and Los Cuatos creeks, or to his five-thousand-acre colony of twenty-acre farmers, where he was trying to enable two hundred and fifty heads of families, along with their families, to make good on the soil.
That Paula sometimes went for long solitary rides, Graham knew, and, once, he caught her dismounting from the Fawn at the hitching rails.
“Don’t you think you are spoiling that mare for riding in company?” he twitted.
Paula laughed and shook her head.