Then she brought all her girl’s pride to her aid, and looked him, laughing, in the face.
“You did not suppose I wanted to stay outside, and go without my tea, did you?”
“N-no,” said Andy. The ages have not taught men to hide as they have taught women.
“I’m ravenous,” said Elizabeth, speaking more quickly than usual; then, with a bright colour in her cheeks and a fire in her eyes, she ran into the room where Dick Stamford was administering tea to the Misses Webster. He glanced at her, casually at first, and afterwards with roused attention.
“I say, Elizabeth,” he took occasion to whisper, “you do look stunning in that lilac gown. You make all the other women look—look tough.”
“Oh, well, I’m tough enough,” said poor Elizabeth ruefully. “Girls have got to be.” But the remark acted as a sort of safety-valve to her seething anger and shamed resentment, so that she was able to keep back her tears, and laugh and joke, with eyes only the more brilliant for them, amongst the group of young people who gathered round her.
The Webster girls being thus left without a cavalier, Andy sat down beside them, and tried to respond to a stream of conversation while he watched Elizabeth and wondered miserably if he had been a conceited ass to think she meant anything. He came to the conclusion that he must have made a mistake as he saw her take a large cake with cream inside and chocolate out, for his own soul loathed even bread and butter at this moment, though he had felt hungry half an hour earlier, and he was very fond of cakes with cream in them.
“Lovely day,” he said, trying to rouse himself with an effort that would have been obvious to the Webster girls if their minds had been sufficiently composed to notice his manner. But they were so engaged in glancing self-consciously about them, and wondering what people thought of them, that they also made perfunctory remarks with no particular connection between one and the other.
At last Mrs. Dixon rustled up, looking to Andy’s loyal eyes extremely smart still, in spite of the fact that her nose was no longer so calmly, palely blue as when she arrived. And when she parted from her nephew over the side of the hired motor vehicle which was to take her and her daughters back to Marshaven, he felt no less than she did that her final remark, “We’re so glad, Andy, to be able to come among your friends and give you a little help socially,” was as just as it was generous.
“It’s awfully good of you. I knew you and the girls were certain to get on with the people about here,” he said gratefully.