“Probably not in my own home,” returned Barres, coolly. “I shall write my family about it to-day.”
Corot Mandel dropped in, also, that morning—he and Esmé were ever prowling uneasily around Dulcie in these days—and he studied the Arethusa through a foggy monocle, and he loitered about Dulcie’s couch.
“You know,” he said to Barres, “there’s nothing like dancing to recuperate from all this metropolitan pandemonium. If you like, I can let Dulcie in on that thing I’m putting on at Northbrook.”
“That’s up to her,” said Barres. “It’s her vacation, and she can do what she likes with it——”
Esmé interposed with characteristic impudence:
“Barres imitates Manship with impunity; I’d like to have a plagiaristic try at Sorolla and Zuloaga, if Dulcie says the word. Very agreeable job for a girl in hot weather,” he added, looking at Dulcie, “—an easy swimming pose in some nice cool little Adirondack lake——”
“Seriously,” interrupted Mandel, twirling his monocle impatiently by its greasy string, “I mean it, Barres.” He turned and looked at the lithely speeding Arethusa. “If that is Dulcie, I can give her a good part in——”
“You hear, Dulcie?” enquired Barres. “These two kind gentlemen have what they consider attractive jobs for you. All I can offer you is liberty to tumble around the hayfields at Foreland Farms, with my sketching easel in the middle distance. Now, choose your job, Sweetness.”
“The hayfields and——”