On Sunday morning Edward accompanied Cliff on this exercise. After looking with rude intensity at the figures and legs of all the young women in sight, Cliff selected two—the two with the barest necks and the largest imitation pearls—and offered to buy them sodas. Edward and Cliff and the two young women sat in a row on tall hinged stools at the drug-store counter. Cliff hardly spoke one word to the girls, though several times he jovially kicked the shin of the nearest. Apart from this he exchanged apparently amusing but incomprehensible badinage with the soda-mixer behind the counter. The girls powdered their noses and talked in indifferent low voices to each other. They did not seem to mind being excluded from manly conversation. But twice Cliff turned to them and said—of the ice cream soda—“Slips down easy, don’t it, kid?” and then Edward was shocked at the instant change of their expression to an obsequiously bright admiring look.
“I thought there were more men than women in California,” said Edward afterwards. “Why do these girls cringe so, anyway before they’re married?”
Cliff did not give Edward much attention. “Never too many beaux for these skirts,” he said. “Say, Edward, did you see the way they was tickled to death by your British pants?”
Miss Weber was naturally more attentive to Edward than were the others, but she was disappointed in him. For three hours on a perfect Sunday afternoon she sat on the couch close to Edward in the stuffy living room, but Edward did not seem to know what was expected of him. When Miss Weber said, “Say, listen, Ed, tell me about the way English girls act with their beaux.” Edward actually began to do so. Usually so sensitive about the impression he was making, he was quite complacent now.
“This girl is really pathetically taken with me,” he thought. He laid before her a description of a day in Epping Forest, he produced an excerpt from his childhood, he told her of a tree with enlarged and tangled roots in which his lead soldiers used to climb. Also he mentioned a young bat which he and Jimmy had found. They made a hole for it in the tree. It stayed two days.
“Jimmy was killed at Loos,” he said.
“Well, isn’t that too bad....” said Miss Weber. She paused for a decent moment before saying, “You’re a nice beau, aren’t you?”
“I don’t suppose you really think so,” said Edward, smiling placidly. “You must have had many more amusing beaux than me.”
“Oh, my no,” replied Miss Weber acidly. She threw her head back on the cushions so that her round neck and line figure were seen to advantage. Edward redeemed himself a little by taking her hand and feeling upward along her arm as if in curiosity.