“Do you like cards?” he demanded, with abrupt change of topic.
“Not much; I don’t play well.”
“I hate them, personally,” he admitted. “Why, then, do you go?”
As she made him wait for an answer he urged: “It’s a crime to sacrifice this afternoon in a hot, stuffy room before a lot of painted pasteboards. I don’t believe they expect you—do they?”
“Well, I don’t believe they do. I don’t often go. I just pay fines all the time.”
“Pay one this once, won’t you? Is this the house? Why, it’s a box, nothing more. Don’t go and be shut up in it!”
Gertrude thought with a pang that Mrs. Turnbull’s was twice as large as her own house—she had envied her.
“Don’t you want to show me one of the walks around here? There must be lots of nice tramps. It will do you good.”
She had never been spoken to in her life like this before. Strange as it may seem, it is, nevertheless, true that she had never exchanged half a dozen words with any man but her husband in her life—that is, any man save the tradespeople, whom she always talked to as long as she could. She had once acknowledged to herself: “I guess I like men better than women—I’d rather talk to the grocer than to any of the stupid Slocum women. It’s common of me, but it’s true.”
McAllister’s voice was like a cradle—she seemed to rock in it.