He followed her into the house silently, and, sitting down on her little sofa, took a cigar out of his pocket. He began to bite off the end absently, then remembered to say, "May I smoke?"
The room was cool and full of the fragrance of white lilies. Mr. Ferguson had planted a whole row of lilies against the southern wall of Mrs. Richie's garden. "Such things are attractive to tenants; I find it improves my property," he had explained to her, when she found him grubbing, unasked, in her back yard. He looked now, approvingly at the jug of lilies that had replaced the grate in the fireplace; but Mrs. Richie looked at the clock. She was tired, and sometimes her good neighbor stayed very late.
"Poor Blair!" she said. "I'm afraid his dinner was rather a disappointment. What charming manners he has," she added, meditatively; "I think it is very remarkable, considering—"
Mr. Ferguson knocked off his glasses. "Mrs. Maitland's manners may not be as—as fine-ladyish as some people's, I grant you," he said, "but I can tell you, she has more brains in her little finger than—"
"Than I have in my whole body?" Mrs. Richie interrupted gaily; "I know just what you were going to say."
"No, I wasn't," he defended himself; but he laughed and stopped barking.
"It is what you thought," she said; "but let me tell you, I admire Mrs.
Maitland just as much as you do."
"No, you don't, because you can't," he said crossly; but he smiled. He could not help forgiving Mrs. Richie, even when she did not seem to appreciate Mrs. Maitland—the one subject on which the two neighbors fell out. But after the smile he sighed, and apparently forgot Mrs. Maitland. He scratched a match, held it absently until it scorched his fingers; blew it out, and tossed it into the lilies; Mrs. Richie winced, but Mr. Ferguson did not notice her; he leaned forward, his hands between his knees, the unlighted cigar in his fingers: "Yes; she threw me over."
For a wild moment Mrs. Richie thought he meant Mrs. Maitland; then she remembered. "It was very hard for you," she said vaguely.
"And Elizabeth's mother," he went on, "my brother Arthur's wife, left him. He never got over the despair of it. He—killed himself."