“How charming! At the sign of the lions? I noticed them as we came up. I must have another look at them. Rather good, as near as I could make out.”
“They are rather nice, I think,” said Susie as one who would not boast of her possessions. “Ernestenoff did them—one of Barye’s pupils.”
Burgess wondered how far she would go. Merrill’s face wore the look of a man who is dying of worry. He had lived in town all his life, and it was inconceivable that this was one of Logan’s daughters. He had forgotten the girl’s name, and he resolved to pay attention in future when people were introduced.
Mrs. Burgess was too far at sea herself to bother with his perplexities. Thoroughly alarmed, she threw the conversation back three thousand years and shifted its playground from the Wabash Valley to the left bank of the Euphrates, confident that the temerarious person with the yellow hair and blue eyes would be dislodged.
“When you first began your excavations in Assyria, Mr. Pendleton, I suppose you didn’t realize how important your work would be to the world.”
The table listened. Merrill groped for light. This Pendleton was, then, a digger among ancient ruins! Miss Wilkinson’s eyes were ready to meet Pendleton’s responsively and sympathetically: her interest in archæology was recent and superficial, but this was only the more reason for yielding ungrudging admiration to the eminent digger. Pendleton did not reply at once to Mrs. Burgess’s question, and instead of appearing pleased by its ingratiating flattery he frowned and played with his wine-glass nervously. When he broke the silence it was to say in a hard tone that was wholly unlike his usual manner of speech:
“I’m not at all sure that it has been of importance; I’m inclined to think I wasted five years on those jobs.”
His depression was undeniable and he made no effort to conceal it. And Mrs. Burgess was angry to find that she had clumsily touched the wrong chord, and one that seemed to be vibrating endlessly. She had always flattered herself that she had mastered the delicate art of drawing out highbrows. Scores of distinguished visitors to the Hoosier capital had gone forth to publish her charm and wit; and this was the first cloud that had ever rested above a dinner table where a Chinese prince had been made to feel at home, and whence poets, bishops, novelists, scientists and statesmen had departed radiant. She had not only struck the wrong note but one that boomed monotonously down the long corridors of time.
Burgess mildly sought to inject a needleful of bromide into the situation.
“You’re probably not a good judge of that, Mr. Pendleton. The world has already set its seal of approval upon your investigations.”