“Introduce me then. And her companion?”
“Will fall to my lot, of course, but I have no clew as to her identity.”
Mrs. Spaulding enlightened me on the hotel piazza, after luncheon, when, as a sequence to this persiflage I brought up my friend. The stranger proved to be Mrs. Agnes Gay Spinney, a literary person, a lecturer on history and literature. It transpired later that she and Edna had become acquainted and intimate at Westford the previous spring during a few weeks which Mrs. Spinney had spent there in the preparation of three new lectures for the coming season. She was a rather serious-looking woman of about forty with a straight figure, good features, and a pleasant, but infrequent smile, suggesting that its owner was not susceptible to flippancy. However, she naïvely admitted that she had come away for pure recreation and to forget the responsibilities of life.
Morgan and the widow were conversing with so much animation that I, to whom this remark was addressed, took upon myself to give youth a free field; consequently I resigned myself to Mrs. Spinney’s dignified point of view, and, avoiding badinage or irony, evinced such an amiable interest in drawing her out that by the end of fifteen minutes she asked leave to show me the catalogue of her lectures, a proof of which she had just received from the printer. When she had gone to fetch it, I promptly inquired:
“Why don’t you two young people improve this fine afternoon by a round of golf?”
A gleam of animation over Morgan’s face betrayed that he regarded the suggestion as eminently happy. But it was Edna who spoke first.
“If Mr. Russell will put up with my poor game, I should enjoy playing immensely. But,” she added smiling confidently and regarding him with her large, steady brown eyes, “I don’t intend to remain a duffer at it long. I see,” she continued after a moment, “from your expression, Mr. Randall, that you doubt this. I could tell from the corners of your mouth.”
“I must grow a mustache to conceal my thoughts, it seems. I was only thinking, Mrs. Spaulding, that golf is a difficult game at which to excel.”
“Yes, but they say that care and determination and—and keeping the eye on the ball will work wonders even for a woman. I shall be only a moment in getting ready, Mr. Russell.”
“But what is to become of you, George?” asked Morgan as she disappeared.