“And his hair stays combed,” Dicky added.
He had held converse with Mr. Musser, which was an experience. Mrs. Rab Gaunt Hastings had gone her way after a series of such experiences, her fortune undivided. It had been said that the undivided nature of her departure was in a measure responsible for Mr. Musser’s nervous breakdown, though he explained it metaphysically. Since he could not be left in his weak state, it was arranged for him to return with Pidge to New York.
“I have known for many months that the field of my labors was to be amplified,” said Mr. Musser, with one of his sudden hopeful flashes. “My illness is but a cleansing in preparation. Always the wrecker before the builder. My throat, for instance——”
Pidge called at this point from the fig tree back of the bungalow. It was their last day.... For seven days they had walked the sunny silent mesas, traced the interminable canyons, and miles and miles of curving shore of the sea. To-night for him, the Valley train to San Francisco; to-morrow afternoon, the Pacific Mail steamer.... She had spoken of Rufus Melton for the first time.
“You think he was really married in France?” she asked.
“They frightened him into it,” Dicky said. “It seemed to me as if Rufe looked upon it as a way out—then found that they didn’t mean to let him escape, even then.”
There was no suffocating emotion about this talk. It was only in moments like this that he understood that he had earned something through the years. They had to go back to the bungalow for lunch with the elder and the child, who objected to each other. There was only a little while alone in the afternoon, because he had to be in Los Angeles for his train at six.
“I started things going among the agents in New York, for a serial,” he said at the last, “but you’ll have to decide. We want a corking long story, Pidge—one that has brain and brawn——”
Her face was turned away.
“Just the right one should be lying around somewhere,” he added.