"I wish George were more like you."
Immediately she added, with a conscious return to dominating briskness:
"You must dress. So must I."
And she rose and without looking again at Merriam went into Mollie June's bedroom.
CHAPTER XVI
THE SENATORIAL DINNER
At last, at twenty-five minutes after six, Merriam sank, exhausted but immaculate, into an easy chair and lit a cigarette, in an effort to compose his nerves and regain the sang froid he needed for his imminent rôle of a particularly debonair senator of the United States acting as host to a brilliant dinner party.
At half past six precisely, Aunt Mary knocked on his door and he opened that door and announced himself ready.
Aunt Mary wore another black evening gown, very similar, in masculine eyes, to the one in which she had appeared the night before, except that it was less conspicuously burdened with jet. Tall and erect, with her gray hair plainly but carefully dressed, she looked every inch a senator's sister and--this would have pleased her--a Norman.
Advancing into the sitting room, Merriam encountered Mollie June, standing again beside the bowl of roses. She was in pink--tulle over satin, though Merriam could not have described it so. But the vivid colour and the dainty softness of the fabric he could appreciate quite well enough, at least in their contiguity to the slender figure, white throat and shoulders, and charming complexion of Mollie June. There is no doubt that he looked a moment longer than he should. The debonair senatorial outside of him was moved to say, "How lovely you are!" But the Ricevillian pedagogue underneath blocked the utterance. Perhaps his eyes said it plainly enough to satisfy Mollie June, for she evinced no disappointment.