“Naturally not. What bank’s your money in?”
“One in St. Joseph.”
“Well, when you draw it out—” I paused to grin at her. “Or, rather, if you draw it out, ask for the whole thing in a single bank draft. I have a bank draft for seven thousand, plus enough in traveler’s checks to get us married and up to Westfield. When we get there we’ll each put five thousand in a joint savings account and the balance in a joint checking account.”
“That sounds all right,” she said in a relieved tone. “I’m ashamed of myself for knowing so little about business and financial things. I’m afraid I’ll have to depend on you to tell me what to do all along the way.”
That suited me fine.
We dropped the subject of business then, and spent the rest of the afternoon and that evening getting acquainted. On my suggestion that Helen and I could get to know each other better if we spent some time alone, we left Mavis in Dewey’s company and went off together.
It was a brisk but sunny day, and for most of the afternoon we just drove around and talked. As time passed I found the woman a more and more pleasant companion. Once her initial shyness had completely worn off, I discovered she could converse quite freely within her limited experience, and that she had a quiet but warm sense of humor.
She even became a little more attractive physically, though she hardly started my pulse fluttering. Seated in the car, the impossible dress she wore for some reason hung a little differently than when she was seated in a chair or standing. While it could hardly be described as clinging to her body even then, I could see that beneath her open coat it gave a faint impression of soft curves concealed under its looseness. If Mavis could manage to get her a dress designed to flatter whatever figure she had, she might look quite presentable.
Her hair was unusually soft and glossy, I noted also. A different hairdo might improve her a hundred percent. And once when she slipped off her glasses to clean the lenses, I was surprised to discover that her features in profile were really excellent. Her teeth were nice, too, small and even and white.
I started making mental notes of the changes I wanted Mavis gently to induce in order to make the woman look less like a fugitive from the back woods.
Mavis and Dewey weren’t expecting us back before ten o’clock. Helen and I had dinner at a downtown restaurant and afterward went to a picture show. When we finally got back to the hotel at ten, I knew it was in the bag. Helen’s eyes were shining and she was chattering as freely as a debutante at her coming-out party.
She seemed a little amazed at herself at being able to get along with a man so unreservedly, but it didn’t amaze me. Getting women to relax and learn to like me was my business.
I cinched it by leaning down and gently kissing her on the lips when I left her in front of her door. She blushed to the roots of her hair and stood there staring at me as though she didn’t know what to do or say.
I took her key from her unresisting hand, unlocked the door, and handed the key back to her.
“Good night, Helen,” I said, smiling at her. “See you in the morning.”
She was still standing in the hall staring after me, a radiant expression on her face, when I keyed open my own door. Then she turned quickly and entered her room.
Mavis was still up and waiting for me to come in. She had left both doors of the connecting bath open, and the moment I entered my room, she appeared in the bathroom doorway. She merely looked at me inquiringly.
Locking the door to the hall, I said, “We’re in. Right after breakfast tomorrow I’ll drag her downtown for the license and blood tests. There’s a three-day waiting period here, so we won’t be able to get married until Sunday. Meantime I’ll have her go back to St. Joseph, pack up her stuff, close out her bank account and come back here to wait it out.”
“I suppose as usual I’ll have to prod her into different clothes and a beauty treatment,” Mavis said without enthusiasm.
“You don’t think I’d take her to Westfield as she is, do you? The whole town would figure it was a shotgun marriage. Tomorrow morning I’ll manage to break her glasses accidentally. Naturally I’ll insist on paying for new ones. You go along for the fitting and pick out better-looking frames. By Saturday they ought to be ready if you insist on quick service. The same day you pick them up, you can help her shop for a wedding outfit. I don’t have to tell you what to buy. You’ve had enough experience.”
“Yes,” Mavis said. “I love making your women presentable so they won’t be a public embarrassment to you.”
She pushed the door shut with the barest suggestion of a slam and went back to her room.
But ten minutes later, after I was in bed, she returned dressed in the plain woolen wrap-around robe she had substituted for her usual filmy negligees when she assumed the role of my sister. By the way it hugged her body, I could tell she had nothing on under it. She stood in the bathroom doorway, her figure silhouetted by the light behind her, and simply waited.
“No,” I said. “Not with them right across the hall.”
“Both our doors are locked,” Mavis said tonelessly.
“Sure. But on the off-chance that Helen decides on a midnight tête-à-tête, it would sound fine for her to hear you scrambling back to your own room when she knocked on the door, wouldn’t it? Starting right now, you’re my sister twenty-four hours a day, every day, until the deal’s finished.”
This time there was more than a mere suggestion of a slam when she closed the door.
Everything went off as I had scheduled it the next morning. At breakfast I told Helen frankly I thought we’d make a good marriage partnership. Helen blushed, looked at her brother for approval, and when he indicated interest in nothing but his eggs, admitted in a low voice that she thought so, too.
Mavis offered me congratulations and wished Helen happiness, both in a dry voice which irritated me, but whose tone seemed to be missed by Helen in her mixture of confusion and happiness. Dewey then came back to earth long enough to realize what was going on, seemed to think something was expected of him, and after thinking it over, tentatively offered me his hand.
I shook it heartily and said, “Thanks, Dewey. You can be best man, if you will. And Mavis maid of honor, if Helen wants her.”
“Oh, I do,” Helen cried.
Tenderly I looked into Helen’s eyes, then gave a little chuckle. “Honey, your glasses are so dirty, I don’t know how you see through them. Let me give them a wipe.”
Reaching out with both hands, I lifted them from her face. Then, negligently holding them by one earpiece with my left hand, I whipped a handkerchief from my breast pocket with my right so enthusiastically, the end of the handkerchief swept the glasses from my loose grip and hurled them a dozen feet away. They landed on the asphalt-tile floor and shattered.
“I’m so sorry,” I said contritely, pushing back from the table and going to recover the pieces.
Both lenses were broken and the frame was bent in two places.
When I returned to the table and handed the wreckage to Helen, I said in an embarrassed voice, “Looks like my first gift to you is going to be new glasses. We’ll go downtown and get them this afternoon.”
Mavis came through on cue. “I’ll take her to an optician,” she offered. “I can help her pick out the frames.”
Helen insisted that the accident wasn’t my fault and that she’d buy the new glasses herself.
“That’d be silly,” I said. “What difference does it make who pays? Everything we have is going to be joint assets in a few days.”
She admitted the logic of that. Then she said, “I’ll have to be led around until the new glasses are ready. I run into things without them. And we can’t possibly get married until then.”