about her angered him: the childish vanity of
her dress, assumed, he would be sure, to charm the Rookie of old days
into renewed remembrance. But he had to be faced finally, since Rookie
was gone so long, stirring up Charlotte to the task of a cold bite, and
with a little shrug she lifted her eyes to face exactly the Dick she had
expected to see: dignified reproach in every line. Nice boy! she had the
honest impartiality to give him that grace only to wish he would let her
enjoy him as she easily could. What a team he and she and Rookie would
be if they could only eliminate this idea of marriage. How they could
make the room ring, here by the fire, with all the quips of their old
memories. Yet wouldn't Dick have been an interruption, even then? Wasn't
the lovely glow of this one evening the amazing reality of her sitting
by the fire with Rookie alone for the first time in many years, and, if
he fell into the enchantment of Malaysia and the mysteries of an
empty-headed Tira, the last? And now here she was dreaming off on Rookie
when she must, at this very instant, to seize any advantage at all, be
facing Dick. She began by laughing at him.

"Dick," she said, "how funny you are. I don't know much about Byron, but
I kind of think you're trying to do the old melancholia act: Manfred or
what d'you call 'em? You just stand there like old style opera,
glowering; if you had a cloak you'd throw an end over your shoulder."

"Nan!" said he, and she was the more out of heart because the voice
trembled with an honest supplication.

"There!" she hastened to put in, "that's it. You're 'choked with
emotion.' Why do you want to sound as if you're speaking into a barrel?
In another minute you'll be talking 'bitterly.'"

Dick was not particular about countering her gibes. That was
unproductive. He had too much of his own to say.

"What do you suppose I'm here for?" he asked, as if, whatever it might
be, it was in itself accusatory.

"Search me," said Nan, with the flippancy he hated.

She knew, by instinct as by long acquaintance, that one charm for him
lay in her old-fashioned reticences and chiefly her ordered speech.
Almost he would have liked her to be the girl Aunt Anne had tried to
make her. That, she paused to note, in passing, was part of the general
injustice of things. He could write free verse you couldn't read aloud
without squirming (even in the company of the all-knowing young), but
she was to lace herself into Victor