“A dressing-room for me!” exclaimed Nella.
He nodded; and then, so quickly that he was scarcely aware it had begun before it was over, he felt warm arms about his neck and cool lips on his cheek, and he heard her voice in his ear:
“There, you’re so good I couldn’t help it!”
Canby looked into her blue eyes, feeling himself tremble as the blood raced through his veins. He had to control himself, and it required an effort, an effort so pronounced that his head swam. Decidedly, this was dangerous, and must be stopped.
“You mustn’t do that, Nella,” he said at last, managing a steady voice somehow.
The blue eyes opened a little in wonder.
“Why not?”
He discovered suddenly that he had no reply. To be sure, why not? He couldn’t very well say to this girclass="underline" “Because you awake my passion.” He had assumed toward her the attitude of guardian, of parent; what plausible objection, then, to a filial kiss? But what should he reply?
“Well, you are really somewhat of a young lady,” he stammered finally.
“Mais, mon Dieu,” she retorted, “I’m to live with you! And you’re so old! And when I love anybody and they’re nice to me, I kiss them!”
He found a mixture of bitter and sweet in that. He looked at her, and saw the feminine in her eyes, a fleeting first hint of the universal lure, the endless invitations; of course, he told himself, all unconscious. After all, she was nearly twenty...
“Last night,” Nella continued artlessly, “I was thinking of what good times we’ll have, if you’re really fond of me, like you said. I know—” she hesitated — “I know I’m awfully ignorant; like the other day when Mrs. Haskins introduced me to Mr. and Mrs. Lodge, and I shook hands with him, and he looked so funny, and you told me afterwards I shouldn’t. There are lots of things like that I don’t know, and I thought that of evenings we could come out here together or on the porch, and I’d sit on your lap while you told me all about such things. But if you don’t want me to kiss you, I guess, you’re not really so fond of me...”
“Good heavens!” Canby exploded. “Of course I want you to kiss me!”
“All right, then I will,” she returned calmly. After a moment she added thoughtfully: “I think I know what the trouble was, Mr. Canby. You were afraid I’d expect you to kiss me back, and of course you don’t like to kiss anybody; that’s why you never got married. But I won’t ask you to.” An instant’s pause, and her eyes danced roguishly. “Except on my birthday,” she added. “Then you’ll have to give me three kisses for a present. One here—” she tapped her right cheek with a dainty figure — “one here—” a tap on the other cheek — “and one here.” And she pressed the tips of her fingers against her lips.
This was rather too much. Artless or no, it could not be expected of a man to sit cold against the fascination of it. Canby rose abruptly to his feet and proposed a drive. Instantly she was for it, and together they went to the garage and got out the roadster. He broke all the speed laws in Dutchess and Putnam counties that afternoon.
Returning about six o’clock, just thirty minutes before the Greenhedge dinner hour, as they turned the last corner of the driveway they caught sight of Garrett Linwood, back from the golf links, seated on a canvas chair in a shady corner of the lawn; and, standing in front of him, talking with considerable rapidity and animation, was a young man with wavy brown hair dressed in a suit of summer silk and swinging a heavy black walking-stick.
“Oh, somebody’s here!” said Nella, touching Canby’s arm.
Canby too had seen the young man.
“It’s Tom,” he replied. “Tom Linwood; Mr. Linwood’s nephew. Probably run down from Newport to make a touch.”
“A touch? What’s that?”
“To ask for some money.”
When, a minute later, they joined the two on the lawn, this surmise was at once corroborated by the young man himself. He greeted Canby respectfully and hastened to assure him that there was no occasion to fear the inconvenience of an unbidden guest, as he had merely come on a flying visit to his uncle on a pressing matter of personal finance.
“Always glad to see you, my boy,” Canby declared, shaking hands. “As for your finances, let me give you a tip: show your uncle how to lower his golf score ten strokes, and you can have his entire fortune... Nella, this is Mr. Tom Linwood. Miss Somi, my ward, Tom.”
The young man turned his dark eyes on Nella for the first time, meeting her blue ones, vivid and startling under the heavy lashes. She half extended her hand, then, with a flush and a quick look at Canby, hastily dropped it. The young society man all at once lost his air of easy good manners; his gaze was developing into a stare.
“I’ll just let Mrs. Wheeler know you’re here,” Canby was saying, as he started for the house.
“Wait a minute!” came from the elder Linwood. “Tom isn’t going to stay.”
“What! Of course he is.”
“No.” Linwood’s voice had a touch of grimness. “He’s going back to New York on the six-thirty-five, and he’s going to be at his office tomorrow morning at nine. There’s been enough of this Newport foolishness for one summer.”
“What about it, Tom?” asked Canby, laughing. “You’ll stay to dinner? There’s a later train.”
The young man glanced at this host, at his uncle, and back at Nella.
“Why yes, thanks; I’ll stay if you don’t mind,” he replied.
On his way to the house, Canby debated in his mind what to do with Nella, feeling that it would be unfair to expect her to preside at her first dinner at Greenhedge with guests. However, since she had had the advantage of observing his sister in the performance of that duty for two weeks, he decided to risk it.
With a critical, though sympathetic, eye on her throughout dinner, he was amused and astonished to observe how thoroughly she had taken advantage of her opportunity at Roselawn, and that, too, without having had at the time any idea that she would so soon have use for that knowledge. The phrases that she used in indicating their seats to her guests were copied verbatim from Janet; when she served a ragout from casserole there was a reproduction of Janet’s every moment. She was clever, Canby observed inwardly, amazed; though he was far from beginning to believe in what he considered his sister’s spiteful estimate of her. The dinner, though informal, was a somewhat complicated affair for a nineteen-year-old girl who two weeks previously had been sorting candy in a Manhattan factory and living in an east-side tenement; but she reached the end with complete success, without a single false step.
Afterwards they went out to sit on the lawn, and, the two elder men engaging in a controversy on the war, young Linwood proposed a walk to Miss Somi. An hour later they returned, and, just before the time came for him to go to the station, whither his uncle was to drive him, the young man managed to get a word alone with Canby.
“Is it possible, sir, what Miss Somi tells me about herself — candy factory and all that rot?” he demanded. “I can’t believe it.”
Canby gave him an affirmative.
The youth whistled. “Well, believe me,” he observed softly to himself as the other moved away, “Uncle Garry is dead right about Newport foolishness. Nothing to it; nobody up there can touch her. In the future my vacations are going to be spent on the classic east side of little old New York.”
IV
For some time after that, Garrett Linwood made his daily pilgrimage to the Wanakahnda golf links alone. Canby’s days were full, what with tennis with Nella, and motoring with Nella, and walking and talking with Nella, and improving Nella’s mind, and trying not to make an old fool of himself with Nella.