She ignored Almington as much as she could in a general conversation.
“Mrs. Massingbyrd can have you,” her attitude seemed to say. “I fight for no man.”
I looked at Drake. If he wanted to keep his rose in the bud, he had better carry her away quickly to a fresher atmosphere.
At the end of dinner the ladies exchanged nods and smiles. I saw that an explanation was forthcoming for the mysterious visit to the stable.
They had been preparing what to me seemed not unlike a little amateur Walpurgisnacht.
It was, of course, Lydia Massingbyrd’s idea. Nobody else, not even Felicia, could have been wrong-minded enough to want to slide downhill in summer. My coachman’s children have a species of roller sled on which they daily endanger their lives by coasting down the steep macadamized road which leads from my house.
“I saw them on my way from the station,” proclaimed Mrs. Massingbyrd, triumphantly; “and saw at once their possibilities.”
“Will you steer me, Mr. Curtis?” asked Cecilia, turning her back on Almington, and giving poor Drake a killing glance; and I thought I surprised a glance of malicious intelligence pass between Mrs. Massingbyrd and my wife.
Now, I know that, told in plain words the morning after, most of our maddest fun seems flat and puerile enough. I know that a decent married man of my age and a lady killer of Almington’s ought to have poohpoohed this childish sport, and sat with our cigars and our whiskies and sodas on the piazza.
I suppose you think that’s what you would have done. But I can tell you, if you had dined with Felicia and Mrs. Massingbyrd, you’d have been caught up in the fire of their folly. It’s contagious, more than anything I know. In the glamour of their lovely nonsense sliding downhill on the coachman’s children’s roller sled would have seemed an appropriate and delightful thing—or sliding down the banister or the cellar door, if it had been their mad whim to do that.