When Graham Spencer left the mill that Tuesday afternoon, it was to visit Marion Hayden. He was rather bored now at the prospect. He would have preferred going to the Club to play billiards, which was his custom of a late afternoon. He drove rather more slowly than was his custom, and so missed Marion's invitation to get there before the crowd.
Three cars before the house showed that she already had callers, and indeed when the parlor-maid opened the door a burst of laughter greeted him. The Hayden house was a general rendezvous. There were usually, by seven o'clock, whiskey-and-soda glasses and tea-cups on most of the furniture, and half-smoked cigarets on everything that would hold them, including the piano.
Marion herself met him in the hall, and led him past the drawing-room door.
“There are people in every room who want to be left alone,” she volunteered. “I kept the library as long as I could. We can sit on the stairs, if you like.”
Which they proceeded to do, quite amiably. From various open doors came subdued voices. The air was pungent with tobacco smoke permeated with a faint scent of late afternoon highballs.
“Tommy!” Marion called, when she had settled herself.
“Yes,” from a distance.
“Did you leave your cigaret on the piano?”
“No, Toots dear. But I can, easily.”
“Mother,” Marion explained, “is getting awfully touchy about the piano. Well, do you remember half the pretty things you told me last night?”