I looked back. He was standing by the door. She went past him without replying or even looking at him. From the automobile I heard smothered chuckles and exclamations. The butler closed the door.
I walked home as fast as I could. Dorinda was waiting up for me. What she said when she saw the ruin of my Sunday suit had better not be repeated. She was still saying it when I took my lamp and went up to bed.
CHAPTER IX
The strawberry festival and the “tempest” were, of course, the subjects most discussed at the breakfast table next morning. Lute monopolized the conversation, a fact for which I was thankful, for it enabled me to dodge Dorinda's questions as to my own adventures. I did not care to talk about the latter. My feelings concerning them were curiously mixed. Was I glad or sorry that Fate had chosen me to play once more the role of rescuer of a young female in distress? That my playing of the role had altered my standing in Mabel Colton's mind I felt reasonably sure. Her words at parting with me rang true. She was grateful, and she had shaken hands with me. Doubtless she would tell her father the whole story and he, too, in common decency, would be grateful to me for helping his daughter. But, after all, did I care for gratitude from that family? And what form would that gratitude take? Would Colton, like Victor Carver, offer to pay me for my services? No, hardly that, I thought. He was a man of wide experience and, if he did offer payment, it would be in some less crude form than a five dollar bill.
But I did not want payment in any form. I did not want condescension and patronizing thanks. I did not want anything—that was it. Up to now, the occupants of the big house and I had been enemies, open and confessed. I had, so far as possible, kept out of their way and hoped they would keep out of mine. But now the situation was more complicated. I did not know what to expect. Of course there was no chance of our becoming friends. The difference in social position, as they reckoned it, made that too ridiculous to consider as a possibility, even if I wished it, which I distinctly did not. But something, an interview, awkward and disagreeable for both sides, or a patronizing note of thanks, was, at the very least, certain to follow the happenings of the previous night. I wished I had gone home when the Coltons first came to the festival. I wished I had not promised Taylor that I would attend that festival. I wished—I wished a great many things. The thought of young Carver's public snubbing before his friends was my one unmixed satisfaction. I rather imagined that he was more uncomfortable than I was or could be.
Lute crowed vaingloriously over his own good judgment in leaving for home early.
“I don't know how 'twas,” he declared. “Somethin' seemed to tell me we was in for a turrible tempest. I was settin' talkin' with Alvin Baker and eatin' my second sasser of berries, when—”
“SECOND sasser?” interrupted Dorinda, sharply. “Where'd you get money for two sassers? I gave you thirty cents when you started for that festival. It cost you fifteen to get inside the gate, and Matildy Dean told me the church folks was cal'latin' to charge fifteen for a helpin' of berries and cream. And you had two sassers, you say. Who paid for the second one?”
Her husband swallowed half a cup of coffee before replying. Then his reply had nothing to do with the question.