"Not on your life! Didn't you say you had some cigars around here?
I've used all of mine and can't get your kind in town." He got up
and started indoors. "As I order the kind you keep for company,
I don't mind smoking them. May I have one?"
She waved her fan. "In the library behind the Brittanica. Keep them there to save Jackson from the sin of smoking them. Best darky on earth, but helping himself isn't stealing, of course. What did they say about the lunch?"
John lighted his cigar and took a good whiff. "You're a sensible woman, Miss Gibbie, to let a fellow smoke a thing like that. It begets love and charity. What did they say about the lunch? Let me see: Most beautiful thing ever seen in Yorkburg, most delicious things to eat, most of them never tasted or heard of before; perfect service, exquisite lace table-cloth or lace something, patriarchal silver, ancestral china, French food, table a picture, you another. Said you looked like a duchess in that old-fashioned gray satin gown. Mrs. Tate declared anybody could tell you were a lady the minute they saw your feet, even if they didn't know who you were, but Mrs. Burnham thought it was your hands that gave you away. Your hands are rather remarkable."
John patted the latter, then flicked the ashes from his cigar. "I didn't tell them, but I could have done so, that it wasn't an idiosyncrasy, but sense, that made you wear elbow sleeves all the time. An arm and wrist and hand like yours have no right to be hidden."
"Nonsense, nonsense!" Again the fan was waved, but Miss Gibbie's lips twitched. "Vanity in a woman of my age is past pardon. I don't like anything to touch my wrist, and sleeves are in the way. Tell me"—she leaned toward him—"is Mary worried with me?"
"Not that I know of. I have scarcely seen her for two days. She's been having so many committee meetings, and so many people have been after her for this and for that, and some sick child at the asylum had to be visited so often, that except in the evenings I have hardly had time to speak to her. And then she is so tired I don't like to keep her up. She can't stand this sort of thing, Miss Gibbie. It will wear her out, and it ought to be stopped." He got out of his chair and began to walk up and down the porch, one hand in his pocket, the other holding his cigar. "It's got to be stopped."
"Who is going to stop it?"
"I know who'd like to stop it." He stood in front of her. "Aren't you going to help me, Miss Gibbie?"
"I am not." She looked up into the strong face now suddenly serious. "I mean in the way you mean. I am going to keep her from wearing herself out, but she is not doing that. Hedwig takes care of her and sees that she gets proper food and rest and is spared a thousand things other women have to contend with. And it doesn't hurt anybody to be busy. If you don't think about something else you think about yourself, and the most ruinous of all germs is the ego germ. She isn't likely to be attacked, for she has good resistance, but it's in the air, and I don't want her to get it. She is very happy."
"Is she?"