Armstrong, red in the face now, formulated the conventional.
“Thanks.” Roberts sat down on the top step, his big-boned body at ease, his great bushy head, in which the gray was beginning to sprinkle thick, a contrast to the dark pillar of the porch. “I just returned an hour ago,” he added as casually as though food for gossip had not been avoided by a hair’s breadth and 219 was not still imminent. “It’s good, unqualifiedly, to be back.”
Armstrong returned to his seat, a bit uncertainly. His hands were trembling uncontrollably; in self-defence he thrust them deep into his pockets.
“Have you been out of town?” he asked.
“Yes, for over a month.” No affectation in that even friendliness. He laughed suddenly in tolerant, all but impersonal, self-analysis. “And I’m tired—tired until the marrow of my bones aches.” He laughed again. “It seems as though I never was so tired in my life.”
Armstrong looked at him, in a sudden flash of the old confidence and admiration.
“I beg your pardon, then,” he said hurriedly. “I didn’t know that you had been away, of course, and rather fancied, from your coming so unexpected—And that again after two years almost—You can understand how it was possible, can’t you? I’m ashamed.”
“Certainly I can understand,” easily. “Let’s all forget it. I have already.” He smiled an instant comprehensively fair into the blue eyes, then characteristically abruptly he digressed. “By the way, Elice,” he said, “can’t we have 220 some of those cookies of yours? I’ve dreamed of them, along with other things, until—Do, please, if they’re in stock. I mean it. Still down at Phelps’s are you?” he asked the other directly when the girl had gone.
“No.” A long pause wherein Armstrong did not look up. “I—left there a couple of weeks ago. I’m not doing anything in particular just now.”
The cookies, far-famed and seemingly always available, were on hand, and Roberts relapsed into silence. From her own seat behind them Elice Gleason sat looking at the two men, precisely as she had looked that first evening they had called in company.