Wyat Carp coughed gently and picked up his manuscript.
“Thank you, Miss Randall,” he began gravely, “I—I—”
“You were saying that you were moved by a feeling of delicacy,” prompted the girl.
“Thank you, Miss Randall.” Mr. Carp bowed. “I—er—am experiencing a feeling of embarrassment because this is a meeting of both sexes and the subject is one which, only recently, has been discussed in mixed company. When one so young as yourself is present—”
“Oh,” replied the girl, a shade of amusement in her voice, “please don’t let my youth interfere with our deliberations. I assure you that, young as I may appear to be, I am quite familiar with the matter we have under consideration.”
This remarkable declaration caused something of a real sensation. Mrs. Sumnet-Ives mentally put the speaker down as “a pert little chit.” Grove Evans was amused, for he disliked Carp. Mrs. Randall catalogued it as another ebullition of Mary’s queerness; even her uncle, despite an affection that accepted everything Mary did as right and proper, felt himself a little shocked. As for Miss Laforth, she favored Miss Randall with a long, inventorying inspection. Here, she reflected, might be a future political rival.
Mr. Carp began to read slowly with here and there a pause to enable his audience to catch a subtle turn of phrase or the flowing rhythm of his periods. He read while the light grew fainter and the fire glowed more brightly, read until Lucas Randall leaned across the table and switched on the light in the great brass lamp.
Mary Randall, deep in her easy chair beside the window and lulled by the soporific monotone of Mr. Carp’s voice, saw the afternoon darken into dusk and the dusk deepen into night. Before her half-closed eyes the city, slowly but purposefully, began to throw off the habiliments of day and don the tinsel of evening. One by one, from far down the spacious avenue, the street lamps glowed into bulbs of color which the wet asphalt, like a winding black mirror, caught up and flung against the polished finishings of a swift and silent train of automobiles and the windows of the nearby mansions.
And still Wyat Carp read on and on, skirting the outer circle of forbidden subjects, leading up to closed doors he made no attempt to open, expatiating voluminously on conditions that all the world knew, elucidating the obvious, ranging from one platitude to another—and avoiding the vital and concrete as though it were poisonous. And as Mr. Carp read Mary became oppressed with his total futility.
Mrs. Ives risked a hasty glance at her jeweled wrist watch.