If it won’t bear its own fruit, perhaps a few limes would do. A mango or two, now and then.
Even a bunch of broccoli.” He turned. “Listen, oafs! What you see in these nice gray eyes is pure loathing! My sister belongs to the Junior League, true. Mother’s farsighted and sometimes uses a lorgnette — I guess the first time most of you swamp Willies ever saw one was when she came to the Open House last year. I say, phooey to you gentlemen and I say faugh! I am going on a hayride tonight with Eleanor, so if anybody wants to borrow my car—”
He was overwhelmed by the onslaught.
Duff Bogan was standing in the Yates back yard, studying the sky. Several broken limbs needed to be removed from the live oaks, but that meant borrowing an extension ladder from a distant neighbor, and Eleanor had the car. Tree pruning, except near the house, was hopeless anyhow. There were broken branches all through the jungle. A whole tree had fallen across the water-filled sinkhole in the woods west of the house. He examined passing clouds.
There was no prospect of showers that he could discern. He decided to begin a long-postponed operation: painting the sun-faded house. With the stepladder he could reach nearly half of it. He started, some while later, on the east wall. He heard but did not see Eleanor drive in.
But presently, from the back yard, a sharp whacking commenced. A cloud of dust eddied around the house and settled grittily on the fresh paint. He came down the ladder.
Barelegged, in shorts and a blouse, with an old silk scarf around her hair, Eleanor was beating rugs. She stood with her back to him, and Duff, as often, admired the line of her chin, eye and forehead. She had high cheekbones and rather deep-set, slightly slanted eyes so his view, which he thought of as a one-quarter profile, gave a special outline of the anatomy of her beauty. The act of beating rugs in such a costume exhibited her body at its muscular best.
He watched her for quite a while before he said, “Hey!”
She turned. “Oh, hello!” Gold tendrils had escaped the scarf and curled like shavings on a damp brow.
“One of us has got to quit — or at least move. I started painting the house a while back.”