“Sandy, I’m not going to ask you any questions when I come back, but I hope you won’t look as foolish as you’ve been looking lately. I don’t think that bachelor’s button, that ragweed, that lady idiot of yours is worth our quarreling. Sandy darling, I do want you to be happy, but unless I up and die on you some day, I’m not going to be hung up like an old cap. I warn you. Now about ice. I’ve left an order for a hundred pounds a week, and if you want to get your own dinners sometimes—”
When she had gone, nothing immediately happened, though a good deal was always about to happen. Orchid had the flapper’s curiosity as to what a man was likely to do, but she was satisfied by exceedingly small thrills.
Martin swore, that morning of June, that she was a fool and a flirt, and he “hadn’t the slightest intention of going near her.” No! He would call on Irving Watters in the evening, or read, or have a walk with the school-clinic dentist.
But at half-past eight he was loitering toward her house.
If the elder Pickerbaughs were there— Martin could hear himself saying, “Thought I’d just drop by, Doctor, and ask you what you thought about—” Hang it! Thought about what? Pickerbaugh never thought about anything.
On the low front steps he could see Orchid. Leaning over her was a boy of twenty, one Charley, a clerk.
“Hello, Father in?” he cried, with a carelessness on which he could but pride himself.
“I’m terribly sorry; he and Mama won’t be back till eleven. Won’t you sit down and cool off a little?”
“Well—” He did sit down, firmly, and tried to make youthful conversation, while Charley produced sentiments suitable, in Charley’s opinion, to the aged Dr. Arrowsmith, and Orchid made little purry interested sounds, an art in which she was very intelligent.
“Been, uh, been seeing many of the baseball games?” said Martin.