Bertha had been treated as second-class so long that she had almost come to believe she was second-class, and the idea of sitting down to supper with Rex Hallam in his aunt’s salon took her breath away.
“Don’t refuse,” he continued. “It will be so much jollier than eating alone, and I want you to pour my coffee.”
He brought her a chair, and before she realized what she was doing she found herself sitting opposite him quite en famille, and chatting as familiarly as if she had known him all her life. He told her of his visit to the Homestead, his drive with Dorcas, and his meeting with Phineas Jones, over which she laughed merrily, feeling that America was not nearly so far away as it had seemed before he came. When supper was over and the table cleared, he began to talk of books and pictures, finding that as a rule they liked the same authors and admired the same artists.
“By the way,” he said, suddenly, “why are you not at the opera with my aunt? Are you not fond of music?”
“Yes, very,” Bertha replied, “but some one must stay with the rooms. Mrs. Hallam is afraid to leave them alone.”
“Ah, yes. Afraid somebody will steal her diamonds, which she keeps doubly and trebly locked, first in a padded box, then in her trunk, and last in her room. Well, I am glad for my sake that you didn’t go. But isn’t it rather close up here? Suppose we go down. It’s a glorious moonlight night, and there must be a piazza somewhere.”
Bertha thought of the broad, vine-wreathed piazza, with its easy-chairs, where it would be delightful to sit with Reginald Hallam, but she must not leave her post, and she said so.
“Oh, I see; another case of the boy on the burning deck,” Rex said, laughing. “I suppose you are right; but I never had much patience with that boy. I shouldn’t have stayed till I was blown higher than a kite, but should have run with the first sniff of fire. You think I’d better go down? Not a bit of it; if you stay here, I shall. It can’t be long now before they come. Zounds! I beg your pardon. Until I said they, I had forgotten to inquire for Mrs. Haynes and Grace. They are well, I suppose, and with my aunt?”
Bertha said they were, and Rex continued:
“Grace and I are great friends. She’s a little peculiar,—wants to vote, and all that sort of thing,—but I like her immensely.”