“Precisely,” Dick confirmed. “Drainage, you know. The mines are flooded—the Mexican situation.”
It was during the morning of the second day—the day of Graham’s expected return—that Dick, who, by being on horseback at eleven, had avoided a repetition of the hurt of the previous day’s “Good morning, merry gentleman” across the distance of his workroom, encountered Ah Ha in a hall with an armful of fresh-cut lilacs. The house-boy’s way led toward the tower room, but Dick made sure.
“Where are you taking them, Ah Ha?” he asked.
“Mr. Graham’s room—he come to-day.”
Now whose thought was that? Dick pondered. Ah Ha’s?—Oh Joy’s—or Paula’s? He remembered having heard Graham more than once express his fancy for their lilacs.
He deflected his course from the library and strolled out through the flowers near the tower room. Through the open windows of it came Paula’s happy humming. Dick pressed his lower lip with tight quickness between his teeth and strolled on.
Some great, as well as many admirable, men and women had occupied that room, and for them Paula had never supervised the flower arrangement, Dick meditated. Oh Joy, himself a master of flowers, usually attended to that, or had his house-staff ably drilled to do it.
Among the telegrams Bonbright handed him, was one from Graham, which Dick read twice, although it was simple and unmomentous, being merely a postponement of his return.
Contrary to custom, Dick did not wait for the second lunch-gong. At the sound of the first he started, for he felt the desire for one of Oh Joy’s cocktails—the need of a prod of courage, after the lilacs, to meet Paula. But she was ahead of him. He found her—who rarely drank, and never alone—just placing an empty cocktail glass back on the tray.
So she, too, had needed courage for the meal, was his deduction, as he nodded to Oh Joy and held up one finger.