“In my profession we got to look our best,” Miss Morning confided. “The men expect it.”
Mr. Goodwin’s mouth moved horribly.
“Now don’t you go getting ideas,” Miss Morning said with a broad smile. “You men are all alike, even the nice young ones like you. I can read you like a book. Mind if I call you Goodie?”
“I mind intensely,” Mr. Goodwin replied, but his voice was lost in the howling of the wind.
“I dance.”
“Ah?”
“Sure. I’ve got a little number called Knit to Fit. I come out wearing a bathing suit, see, and I bounce around a little and then the suit gets caught on something, maybe a gentleman’s watch fob, and it unravels, only not all of it. Pretty good, eh?”
“Marvelous,” Mr. Goodwin bleated.
“But maybe you’ll see me. I might get a chance to do it at the Lodge. You going to be there long?”
“No. Oh, no.”
“Too bad. I’m crazy about fair men. Say, your teeth are chattering. Are you cold?”
“Yes.”
“That’s one advantage of my profession,” Miss Morning said cheerfully. “You get toughened up. I never mind the cold anymore. Boy, it sure was hard at first with nothing but a G-string between me and ammonia.”
Mr. Goodwin folded his arms over his chest and repeated this sentence bleakly to himself. It conveyed nothing to him.
In the seat ahead, Joyce Hunter burst, incongruously, into giggles.
“Poppa.”
“Yes?” Mr. Hunter’s voice was cold.
“I bet you can hardly wait.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You’ll be bristling with watch fobs, Poppa!”
“Joyce!”
“What’s a G-string?”
Mr. Hunter cleared his throat. “It is, I believe, some — some sort of apparatus used to camouflage the female form. I don’t wish to discuss it.”
A hand tapped his shoulder and he turned his head irritably and found himself staring into Miss Morning’s eyes.
“I say,” Miss Morning said. “You got the time? My watch stopped.”
Mr. Hunter blushed painfully and reached for his watch. “Exactly four-thirty-six.”
Joyce giggled again.
“Thanks.” Miss Morning returned to her pursuit of Mr. Goodwin. “Nice old guy, isn’t he? I’m crazy about older men, especially if they got white hair. I don’t know, it sort of gets me. I wonder who the deadpanned dame is.”
“His daughter. She calls him Poppa.”
Miss Morning chuckled. “That doesn’t mean a thing, Goodie. If all the guys I’ve called Poppa were laid end to end...”
Mr. Goodwin struck his forehead again and said, “Spare me. Spare me the apodosis.”
“What’s that?”
“Spare me the end of that sentence. I don’t think I could bear to hear the results of having all the men you’ve called Poppa laid end to end.”
“Say, you are a funny guy.” Miss Morning’s voice was anxious. “What’s your racket?”
“I write,” Mr. Goodwin said belligerently. “I write poetry. I am a poet.”
“Well, you needn’t get tough about it. I didn’t say anything about poets. As a matter of fact, I’m crazy about poets.” Miss Morning retired rather huffily to her second layer of chocolates.
Joyce Hunter whispered, “I say, Poppa.”
“Yes?”
“Did you hear that? He’s Goodwin, the poet, Anthony Goodwin.”
“Is he? I never read poetry.”
“Well, naturally not. Neither do I. But he’s supposed to be terribly debauched. Lies around in a drunken stupor. I read it in Time.”
“I don’t think,” Mr. Hunter said dryly, “that he can debauch Miss Morning.”
“Well, there’s me. I think he’s rather cute. Too bad he’s traveling with his mother.”
“His mother?” Mr. Hunter said in surprise.
“The fat lady in the back seat.”
Mr. Hunter turned his head, and there, sure enough, was a fat lady occupying the whole of the left back seat. She wore an immense raccoon coat and it was impossible to tell how much of the lady was coat and how much sheer lady. At any rate the seat was full. The lady was gently snoring.
“I can’t understand you, Joyce,” Mr. Hunter said crossly. “One minute you’re in a coma and the next minute you’re ferreting out other people’s private lives.”
“Well, that’s just my way,” Joyce said modestly. She turned her head and looked again at the fat lady in the raccoon coat. She added thoughtfully, “Of course she may not be his mother at all. She may just look old enough to be his mother because he’s debauched her so thoroughly.”
“Oh, Lord,” Mr. Hunter said with a sigh.
“Well, you just wait and see!”
Silence descended upon the Hunters and Joyce relapsed into her coma.
In the back seat the raccoon coat began to twitch and the gentle snoring ceased and Mrs. Evaline Vista returned to consciousness, pleasantly unaware that her morals had been slandered.
She yawned loudly, and stretched, and thought what an excellent idea it was to sleep away the trip and what an excellent idea the trip itself was. It would do Anthony, and Anthony’s poetry, a world of good. Anthony had had too much pampering; he needed to face the world and battle the elements. He needed, in one word, Mrs. Vista’s favorite word, virility.
“Ah, virility,” Mrs. Vista whispered, rather sadly, for she had suffered from it, in her day. Mr. Cecil Vista had had far too much of it. His last trip to Brighton with his secretary had cost him ten thousand pounds a year alimony. It was only fitting that Mrs. Vista should use the ten thousand pounds to inject into the arts some of Cecil’s own quality.
She studied the back of Anthony’s head fondly. What a good thing it was that innocent unworldly geniuses had a Mrs. Vista.
She said, “Anthony!”
Mr. Goodwin turned sharply. “Ah, Evaline. So you’re awake.”
“Where’s your hat, Anthony?”
“On my lap.”
“You’ll catch pneumonia. Put it on instantly.”
By way of answer Mr. Goodwin jammed the hat savagely down over his ears. It was a green felt Tyrolean hat with an orange feather growing from the band. Mr. Goodwin looked and felt extremely silly in it, but it had been a present from Mrs. Vista who had bought it in Bavaria for Cecil. Cecil had refused to wear it, so Mrs. Vista gave it to Anthony. She had, at times, an economical turn of mind.
“There,” said Mrs. Vista in her comfortable bellow. “Much better. Oh, driver! Driver! Are we nearly there?”
The driver took his eyes off the road for a fraction of a second. “Few more miles to go.”
He had a slight accent. A French-Canadian, Mrs. Vista decided, and was immediately impelled to heave herself out of her seat and stagger the few steps to the front of the bus. She fell into the seat opposite Paula and the red-haired young man and settled down to engage the bus driver in conversation. She had never talked to a French-Canadian and she thought it probable that French-Canadian culture could do with a jog.
“A very bumpity road,” she said pleasantly. “Is there any danger, do you suppose?”
The driver did not turn around. He had pulled his hat down and his coat collar up and his voice came out, muffled: “One of my tire chains is loose.”
There did seem to be a queer, clanking noise, Mrs. Vista agreed.
“I may have to adjust it,” the driver said. “I thought it would hold out but it will not.” He raised his voice. “Please remain in your seats, everyone. We are stopping for a minute.”
The bus lurched to a stop. The driver squirmed out of his seat and wrenched the door open. A blast of fine sharp snow like tiny particles of steel was blown into the open door. It cut into Mrs. Vista’s face and stung her to tears.