"Well, anyway, he saved the flowers, I'll say that for him. It's more than I expected him to do, if he did get a fall."
"And he didn't even have a shirt on, Emily. His coat flew open as he fell——"
"Oh, Bob, surely he must have had a shirt on! What did he have on, Martha?"
"I'm sorry I don't know, mother. I didn't understand father wanted me to examine all the fellows' B.V.D.'s. He'd been playing tennis, and he just grabbed some sweater when we hollered to him to come along. Next time I pick up a man, I'll say to him, 'If you haven't got a nice proper undershirt on, you can't go riding in my father's car.'"
Bob snorted.
"Who said anything about undershirts? A nice thing for a girl like you to be talking about!"
"You mean he didn't have an undershirt on? He wasn't certainly stark naked, mother." Martha suddenly had become prim.
"All I say is, he wasn't dressed right to go riding with girls. You listen to what I'm saying, Martha! If you had gone bang into the truck, not a bone in your body——"
And what happened then to interrupt him, Bob said happened every time he tried to "settle" Martha. A hooting and a tooting of horns, and laughing and whistles, from the street intervened. Martha jumped up.
"There they are," she said to her mother. "Send the car up by three, dad. I suppose you can trust the old bus to me if mother is along. It isn't a Rolls-Royce, after all." She stood gobbling down the dessert. With her fork she pushed together the last crumbs on her plate, and lifting it, she turned her smooth bobbed head halfway towards her father, and practically winking one gray eye towards her mother, she remarked, demurely, with an indifference that made the words absurd: