"But the house?" he said, forcing a smile.
"Only one thing lacking; yes, and I told him so at once—flat, like that!"
"What?"
"No garage!"
He affected to laugh hugely at this bit of fiction.
When he sought to explore her history she was ready with another artfully contrived story to infuriate him:
"My life? Oh, it's terribly exciting! Father was a gambler—Mississippi River, mining-camps and all sorts of dangerous places. Mother was in the circus, bareback riding—hoops, you know. They separated when I was five; had a terrible fight, they say. I went around with the circus, in the processions, dressed as a star. Mother was teaching me the tight-rope; I'd learned a bit of acrobating, too. There was a funny old clown."
She stopped, with a far-off pensive look. When she invented a story she had a natural gift for dramatic detail. She said very sadly, as if conjuring up the figure of a mournful child, sinking her voice to a whisper:
"My mother drank. When she was in her tantrums she was very cruel to me—she beat me! I remember my poor little arms and legs all blistered and smarting! Then I used to run to Jocko—that was the funny old clown's name. He had three colors in his hair, red, white and brown—all natural, too! Jocko used to put a poultice on my wounds and give me candy. I loved old Jocko; he taught me the back-somersault, too. Then mother ran off with a dentist—one of the kind that travel around in a band-wagon from village to village, teeth-pullers, you know, and whenever a tooth is to be taken out the bass-drum goes off bang! so you don't notice the pain. The dentist hated me! He was a horribly tall, long man with a broken nose. I can see him leering down at me like an ogre and saying:
"'Soon as you get your second teeth, little brat, I'll make a fine set out of 'em, worth seventy plunks at the least. Just you wait!'