“How’s everything with you?” parried his sister-in-law.
Idly for a few moments the Senior Surgeon threw out stray crumbs of thought to feed the conversation, while smilingly all the while from her luxuriant East Indian chair his sister-in-law sat studying the general situation. The Senior Surgeon’s sister-in-law was always studying something. Last year it was archæology; the year before, basketry; this year it happened to be eugenics, or something funny like that; next year, again, it might be book-binding.
“So you and your pink-and-white shepherdess are going off on a little trip together?” she queried banteringly. “The girl’s a darling, Lendicott. I haven’t had as much sport in a long time as I had that afternoon last June when I came in my best calling clothes and helped her paint the kitchen woodwork. And I had come prepared to be a bit nasty, Lendicott. In all honesty, Lendicott, I might just as well ’fess up that I had come prepared to be just a little bit nasty.”
“She seems to have a way,” smiled the Senior Surgeon—“she seems to have a way of disarming people’s unpleasant intentions.”
A trifle quizzically for an instant the woman turned her face to the Senior Surgeon’s. It was a worldly face, a cold-featured, absolutely worldly face, with a surprisingly humorous mouth that warmed her nature just about as cheerfully, and just about as effectually, as one open fireplace warms a whole house. Nevertheless, one often achieved much comfort by keeping close to “Aunt Agnes’s” humorous mouth, for Aunt Agnes knew a thing or two, Aunt Agnes did, and the things that she made a point of knowing were conscientiously amiable.
“Why, Lendicott Faber,” she rallied him now, “why, you’re as nervous as a school-boy! Why, I believe—I believe that you’re going courting!”
More opportunely than any man could have dared to hope, the White Linen Nurse appeared suddenly on the scene in her little blue serge wedding-suit, with her traveling-case in her hand. With a gasp of relief the Senior Surgeon took her case and his own and went on down the path to his car and his chauffeur, leaving the two women temporarily alone. When he returned to the piazza, the woman of the world and the girl not at all of the world were bidding each other a really affectionate good-by, and the woman’s face looked suddenly just a little bit old, but the girl’s cheeks were most inordinately blooming.
In unmistakable friendliness his sister-in-law extended her hand to him.
“Good-by, Lendicott, old man!” she said, “and good luck to you!” A little slyly out of her shrewd, gray eyes, she glanced up sidewise at him. “You’ve got the devil’s own temper, Lendicott dear,” she teased, “and two or three other vices probably, and if rumor speaks the truth, you’ve run amuck more than once in your life; but there’s one thing I will say for you, though it prove you a dear stupid: you never were overquick to suspect that any woman could possibly be in love with you.”
“To what woman do you particularly refer?” mocked the Senior Surgeon, impatiently.