“Enclosed court,” I answered, “I think they have them in some of the ranch houses in the southwest. They are sort of Mexican—”
“I see; well, he told her about that, and about how the sunsets looked on the mountains, it was a perfect love of a letter, but what I was getting at was this—he said he had a one-eyed Chinese cook who could spit eight feet. Can you imagine Leslie with that?”
I laughed. It did seem awfully funny.
Viola laughed too, but as Leslie had, which was not in an entirely kind way, and then she went on to say almost exactly what Leslie had said about her.
“It’ll be the making of her,” she said (and it was!), “but I never would have believed she would allow herself to care for a man who lives in the middle of nowhere. However, nothing turns out as one expects it to. I guess I ought to leave you?”
“You ought to,” I agreed, “but I don’t suppose you will—”
“Oh, do come have tea with me,” said Leslie from the doorway, and I gave up. We went to her room to find her bed covered with the veils which she had been trying on over her flowered toque.
“A woman should look her best,” she said, but she flushed and avoided looking at us as she said it.
“When will he be here?” asked Viola.
“Who?” asked Leslie coolly, but something made her drop the shoe horn with which she was measuring out the tea, and then knock a cream puff from a heavy piece of china that had been designed to hold soap.