Prissy regarded her with patient pity and went on:
“Jim didn't see me, you un—you see—and—but just as I was about to say hello to him he turns around and begins to stare into the crowd of other people getting off the same train that he got off, you underst—Well, I had plenty of time for my train, so I waited—not to see what was up, you un—I do say it a lot, don't I? Well, I waited, and who should come along but—well, this you never would guess—not in a month of Sundays.”
A couple of flanneled oaves impatient for the tennis-court stole away, and Pet said,
“Speed it up, Priss; they're walking out on you.”
“Well, they won't walk out when they know who the woman was. Jim was waiting for—he was waiting for—”
He paused a moment. Nobody seemed interested, and so he hastened to explode the name of the woman.
“Charity Coe! It was Charity Coe Jim was waiting for! They had come in on the same train, you understand, and yet they didn't come up the platform together. Why? I ask you. Why didn't they come up the platform together? Why did Jim come along first and wait? Was it to see if the coast was clear? Now, I ask you!”
There was respect enough paid to Prissy's narrative now. In fact, the name of Charity in such a story made the blood of everybody run cold—not unpleasantly—yet not altogether pleasantly.
Some of the guests scouted Prissy's theory. Mrs. Neff was there, and she liked Charity. She puffed contempt and cigarette-smoke at Atterbury, and murmured, sweetly, “Prissy, you're a dirty little liar, and your long tongue ought to be cut out and nailed up on a wall.”
Prissy nearly wept at the injustice of such skepticism. It was Pet Bettany, of all people, who came to his rescue with credulity. She was sincerely convinced. A voluptuary and intrigante herself, she believed that her own ideas of happiness and her own impulses were shared by everybody, and that people who frowned on vice were either hypocrites or cowards.