“Oh, yes, she does—she wants a duke to drop out of the clouds and swoop her up and a lot she cares if her whole family starve to death. I don’t blame her father for his morning’s morning, if he has to listen to her, and she spends all her money on herself, turning it right into the store for nonsense. Her spare time she spends in Owen Pringle’s boudoir,” Dan’s eyes twinkled, “learning how to be one of the idle rich on eight per! Oh, ’Raine, ask old Ali Baba up for supper—I want to know how it feels to have somebody with sense as a guest.”
“But it’s a real joy for the girls to come here—”
Here Dan betrayed more insight into Lorraine’s life than she fancied he possessed. “It was never a joy for them to come and see you when you lived at the parsonage, scrubbing and cooking and mending! I never saw Josie Donaldson rolling up her sleeves to give you a lift or Hazel Mitchell hanging about until she was asked inside. It was no joy then. They beat it the other way when they saw you coming—”
He spied a tear in Lorraine’s gentle eyes. So he humbly added, “Never mind my growls, do as you like—you don’t dictate to me about the grafters I take to lunch or driving, do you?”
Lorraine did not answer; she was thinking that Dan, too, was quite in the same category. Dan had never had any “joy” in seeing Lorraine until Thurley had gone away. Dan was no different in some respects from the others!
Before the vacation occurred, with Owen, Josie and Cora as the guests, Lorraine rummaged in Dan’s chiffonier to find extra goggles for Cora and a linen motor coat for Owen. She came upon a magazine lying face downward.
She understood why it was almost hidden, for it was a recent issue of a musical journal and the cover page was a brilliant color reproduction of a photograph of Thurley Precore as Aïda, glowing praise briefly written underneath. Thurley wore a mesh of lace studded with brilliants; she half reclined on a divan, like some legendary queen dreaming in the blue-black night!
Lorraine did not know how long she had been crouching on the floor as if she were a child discovering hidden Christmas presents. Dan came in and, bending down, gently took the magazine away. Lorraine started up. She realized the contrast between the photograph and herself far more than Dan—since Dan only realized Thurley. Her bungalow apron over a pink house dress, her heelless slippers, her unpowdered, flushed face—and that gorgeous, super-person smiling out so temptingly at them both!
“’Raine, do you mind—just having the picture?” he asked with none of his customary aggression.
“Why, no—of course not.” She was glad to make her escape.