"I started to and then somebody always said something," said Lulu humbly.
Nothing could so much as cloud Lulu"s hour. She was proof against any shadow.
"Say, but you look tremendous to-night," Dwight observed to her.
Understanding perfectly that this was said to tease his wife, Lulu yet flushed with pleasure. She saw two women watching, and she thought: "They"re feeling sorry for Ina--n.o.body talking to her." She laughed at everything that the men said. She pa.s.sionately wanted to talk herself.
"How many folks keep going past," she said, many times.
At length, having noted the details of all the clothes in range, Ina"s isolation palled upon her and she set herself to take Ninian"s attention. She therefore talked with him about himself.
"Curious you"ve never married, Nin," she said.
"Don"t say it like that," he begged. "I might yet."
Ina laughed enjoyably. "Yes, you might!" she met this.
"She wants everybody to get married, but she wishes I hadn"t," Dwight threw in with exceeding rancour.
They developed this theme exhaustively, Dwight usually speaking in the third person and always with his shoulder turned a bit from his wife. It was inconceivable, the gusto with which they proceeded. Ina had a.s.sumed for the purpose an air distrait, casual, attentive to the scene about them. But gradually her cheeks began to burn.
"She"ll cry," Lulu thought in alarm, and said at random: "Ina, that hat is so pretty--ever so much prettier than the old one." But Ina said frostily that she never saw anything the matter with the old one.
"Let us talk," said Ninian low, to Lulu. "Then they"ll simmer down."
He went on, in an undertone, about nothing in particular. Lulu hardly heard what he said, it was so pleasant to have him talking to her in this confidential fashion; and she was pleasantly aware that his manner was open to misinterpretation.
In the nick of time, the lobster was served.
Dinner and the play--the show, as Ninian called it. This show was "Peter Pan," chosen by Ninian because the seats cost the most of those at any theatre. It was almost indecent to see how Dwight Herbert, the immortal soul, had warmed and melted at these contacts. By the time that all was over, and they were at the hotel for supper, such was his pleasurable excitation that he was once more playful, teasing, once more the irrepressible. But now his Ina was to be won back, made it evident that she was not one lightly to overlook, and a fine firmness sat upon the little doubling chin.
They discussed the play. Not one of them had understood the story. The dog-kennel part--wasn"t that the queerest thing? Nothing to do with the rest of the play.
"I was for the pirates. The one with the hook--he was my style," said Dwight.
"Well, there it is again," Ina cried. "They didn"t belong to the real play, either."
"Oh, well," Ninian said, "they have to put in parts, I suppose, to catch everybody. Instead of a song and dance, they do that."
"And I didn"t understand," said Ina, "why they all clapped when the princ.i.p.al character ran down front and said something to the audience that time. But they all did."
Ninian thought this might have been out of compliment. Ina wished that Monona might have seen, confessed that the last part was so pretty that she herself would not look; and into Ina"s eyes came their loveliest light.
Lulu sat there, hearing the talk about the play. "Why couldn"t I have said that?" she thought as the others spoke. All that they said seemed to her apropos, but she could think of nothing to add. The evening had been to her a light from heaven--how could she find anything to say? She sat in a daze of happiness, her mind hardly operative, her look moving from one to another. At last Ninian looked at her.
"Sure you liked it, Miss Lulu?"
"Oh, yes! I think they all took their parts real well."
It was not enough. She looked at them appealingly, knowing that she had not said enough.
"You could hear everything they said," she added. "It was--" she dwindled to silence.
Dwight Herbert savoured his rarebit with a great show of long wrinkled dimples.
"Excellent sauces they make here--excellent," he said, with the frown of an epicure. "A tiny wee bit more Athabasca," he added, and they all laughed and told him that Athabasca was a lake, of course. Of course he meant tobasco, Ina said. Their entertainment and their talk was of this sort, for an hour.
"Well, now," said Dwight Herbert when it was finished, "somebody dance on the table."
"Dwightie!"
"Got to amuse ourselves somehow. Come, liven up. They"ll begin to read the funeral service over us."
"Why not say the wedding service?" asked Ninian.
In the mention of wedlock there was always something stimulating to Dwight, something of overwhelming humour. He shouted a derisive endors.e.m.e.nt of this proposal.
"I shouldn"t object," said Ninian. "Should you, Miss Lulu?"
Lulu now burned the slow red of her torture. They were all looking at her. She made an anguished effort to defend herself.
"I don"t know it," she said, "so I can"t say it."
Ninian leaned toward her.
"I, Ninian, take thee, Lulu, to be my wedded wife," he p.r.o.nounced.
"That"s the way it goes!"
"Lulu daren"t say it!" cried Dwight. He laughed so loudly that those at the near tables turned. And, from the fastness of her wifehood and motherhood, Ina laughed. Really, it was ridiculous to think of Lulu that way....
Ninian laughed too. "Course she don"t dare say it," he challenged.
From within Lulu, that strange Lulu, that other Lulu who sometimes fought her battles, suddenly spoke out:
"I, Lulu, take thee, Ninian, to be my wedded husband."
"You will?" Ninian cried.
"I will," she said, laughing tremulously, to prove that she too could join in, could be as merry as the rest.
"And I will. There, by Jove, now have we entertained you, or haven"t we?" Ninian laughed and pounded his soft fist on the table.
"Oh, say, honestly!" Ina was shocked. "I don"t think you ought to--holy things----what"s the _matter_, Dwightie?"
Dwight Herbert Deacon"s eyes were staring and his face was scarlet.
"Say, by George," he said, "a civil wedding is binding in this state."