CHAPTER XII
FLISS—still Fliss despite the dignity of the name of Allenby—was, after two years, still attracting attention. She reacted to it exactly as she had reacted to her own popularity at the High School dances. It enhanced every sparkling quality.
She had been busy. After her marriage, enforcedly quiet because it would never do to draw unnecessary attention to the social unimportance of her family, she and Matthew had gone traveling. They had had a good time. She hung on his arm and petted him; she begged for things and was enthusiastically grateful for them when he gave them to her. She kept him laughing and herself in constant good temper and in every fresh extravagance of silk or fur or velvet she was prettier than before. Matthew laughed at her and let her pet him and expanded. He called her a little crook and she admitted it, but he never had the bad taste to ask her if she would have married him if he had been poor. They were frank with each other, but never moved much below the easy surface of things. Never had Matthew really played before, and under her skillful leadership he learned a good deal about play. He learned the fun of extravagance. His mother had not been a person to accept money or presents easily. Fliss rose resplendent from a shower of them. And from the depths of her little savage heart she was grateful for presents, for relief from sordidness; and grateful most of all for the sheer content with the life he made possible.
“Don’t we have fun?” she would say in her strongest italics, every now and then, with a swift little caress that was perfectly honest in its affection as far as it went.
“We do,” he would acknowledge with smiling, amused understanding—more than that, with pleasure.
He had his second glimpse of his wife’s remarkable adaptability when they visited his mother. His mother had been duly written of his marriage, had duly written to say she expected to see them while they were on their wedding trip, and, moved by some impulse, Matthew had deliberately sandwiched a week in the little Indiana town between the more brilliant points on their itinerary. They arrived in Peachtree about nightfall, stepping from the jumpy local train to a station platform dripping with rain and lit only by the dingy glow from a quick lunch counter window. Fliss, well acclimated by this time to waiting red-caps and taxis, looked about her and then at Matthew with amusement.
“You are completely out of the picture,” said Matthew. “You look shockingly resplendent up against Peachtree. Don’t look about you for cabs; there are no cabs. No one needs cabs here.”
His mother rounded the corner of the station house, driving her umbrella before her. Matthew seemed to recognize her by the swish of her skirts in the rain. He took her umbrella and kissed her gravely.
“Good boy,” she said. “Is this Florence?”
Fliss reached half way up on Mrs. Allenby’s spare, tall form. She was silhouetted for a moment against the black dress of the older woman. Then Mrs. Allenby inspected the bags.