“No—I am hungry.”
Her prompt and unexpected reply pleased him hugely.
“Right! There you are!”
They were flying up a drive, round a grass plot and under a porte-cochère. Sallie saw a house girdled with glass that glowed, warm and alluring.
She went into the hall while her host parked the car. A mirror on the wall reflected a face very different from the one she saw habitually in the jagged glass of the dressing-table or the mottled one above her washstand. Its eyes were glistening, red lips were laughing, and at one corner a dimple danced. The blood surged under the smooth skin and went singing through every vein.
To a rotund observer standing nearby, the girl in the mirror looked like a golden-haired sprite. To Sallie she looked nothing more than happy. She proceeded to powder her nose critically and straighten the alley cat on the shining curls. She was still engaged in the process when Mr. James Patterson came in and bore her off under the rotund one’s fat nose. Mr. Patterson [264] ]had already achieved a proprietory air that prohibited trespassing under penalty of the law.
He refused the first table offered, selecting one close against the window with an intimate little lamp shedding its blush over the cloth. Sallie had never felt so important, not even the night of her stage debut, for then she had been conscious solely of the fact that she was dancing with no skirt on before a lot of people.
The head-waiter helped her out of the ulster. Mr. Patterson then seated himself and for the first time Sallie saw him under revealing electricity.
His hair, parted at the side and brushed straight from his forehead, gave evidence of having been in boyhood the color affectionately known as “carrots.” But frequent use of water and military brushes had charitably darkened it. Remnants of freckles lingered where no amount of hatless motoring could promote more than one coat of tan. Above them gray eyes, not so young as they might have been, searched a world with which they were well acquainted. Smiling, they were a boy’s. In repose, as old as any frequenter’s of stage doors.
Sallie’s gaze settled, not on his features but on his clothes. Patch pockets slanted across the coat. The waistcoat was high and of the same dark blue material threaded with a hairline of white. From the sleeves she thought rather too short, he shook down blue silk shirt cuffs matched by a soft collar. His blue Persian tie was held in an immaculate four-in-hand by a small pearl scarfpin. The correctness, the perfection of detail, were to Sallie positively thrilling. As he picked up the menu she noticed that his hands were wide and muscular [265] ]with no shine on the nails. She was glad he wasn’t a dude.