Down in a second--keep me some tea!"
n.o.body moved on the porch. The doctor"s face was crimson, Elsie"s kind eyes wide with horror. Sally called a final reflection from the first landing:
"Too bad not to have him see me looking so beautiful!" she sang frivolously. "Operation--h"m! An important operation--I don"t believe it!"
She proceeded calmly to her room, and was b.u.t.toning herself into a trim linen gown when Elsie burst in, flushed and furious, cast the baby dramatically upon the bed, and hysterically recounted the effects of her recent remarks. Sally, at first making a transparent effort to seem amused, and following it with an equally vain attempt at being dignified, finally became very angry herself.
"When Ferdie does things like this," said Sally, heatedly, "I declare I wonder--I was going to say I wonder he has a friend left in the world!
As you say, it"s done now, but it makes me so FURIOUS! And I don"t think it shows very much savior faire on your part, Elsie. However, we won"t discuss it! Ferdie will try one joke too many, one of these days, and then--Now, look here, Elsie," Sally interrupted her tirade to state with deadly deliberation, "unless that man goes home before dinner, as a man of any spirit would do, I"m going over to Mary Bevis"s, and you can make whatever apologies you like!"
"Of course he won"t go," said Elsie, with spirit. "The only thing to do is to ignore it entirely. And of course you"ll come down."
Sally had resumed her ruffled calling costume, and was now pinning on an effective hat. Her mouth was set.
"Please!" pleaded her sister, inserting a gold bracelet tenderly between George"s little jaws, without moving her eyes from Sally.
"I will not!" said Sally. "I never want to see him again--superior, big, calm codfish--too lofty to care what any one says about him! I don"t like a man you can walk on, anyway!" She began to pack things in a suit-case--beribboned night-wear, slippers, powder, and small jars.
Presently, hasping these things firmly in, she went to the door, and opened it a cautious crack.
"Where are they?" she asked.
"I don"t know," said Mrs. Ferdie, dispiritedly. "I think you"re very mean!"
The bedrooms of the Ferdies" house opened in charming Southern fashion upon open balconies, over whose slender rails one could look straight into the hall below. Sally listened intently.
"What a horrible plan this house is built upon!" she said heartily.
"Nothing in the world is more humiliating than to have to sneak about one"s own house like a thief, afraid of being seen! Where"s the motor--at the side door? Good. I"ll run it over to the Bevises" myself, and Billy can come back with it. That is, I will if I can manage to get to the side door. Those idiots of men are apparently looking at Ferd"s rods and tackle, right down there in the hall! I can distinctly hear their voices! I wish Ferd had thought of situations like this when he planned this silly balcony business! The minute I open this door they"ll look up; and I"ll stay up here a week rather than meet them!"
"They"ll go out soon," said Elsie, soothingly, as she removed a shoe-horn from contact with George"s mouth.
"I knew Ferd would regret this balcony!" pursued Sally, eyes to the crack.
"Ferdie"s not regretting it!" t.i.ttered her sister.
Sally cast her a withering glance. Elsie devoted herself suddenly to George.
"Go down and lure them into the garden," pleaded Sally, presently.
Elsie obligingly picked up her son and departed, but Sally, watching her go, was infuriated to notice that a mild request from George"s nurse, who met them in the hall, apparently drove all thoughts of Sally"s predicament from the little mother"s mind, for Elsie went briskly toward the nursery, and an absolute silence ensued.
Sally went listlessly to the window, where her eye was immediately caught by a long pruning ladder, leaning against the house a dozen feet away. Alma, the little waitress, quietly mixing a mayonnaise on the kitchen porch, was pressed into service, and five minutes later Sally"s suit-case was cautiously lowered, on the end of a Mexican lariat, and Sally was steadying the top of the ladder against her window-sill. Alma was convulsed with innocent mirth, but her big, hard hands were effective in steadying the lower end of the ladder.
Sally, who was desperately afraid of ladders, packed her thin skirts tightly about her, gave a fearful glance below, and began a nervous descent. At every alternate rung she paused, unwound her skirts, shut her eyes, and breathed hard.
"PLEASE don"t shake it so!" she said.
"Aye dadden"t!" said Alma, merrily.
The ladder slipped an inch, settling a little lower. Sally uttered a smothered scream. She dared not move her eyes from the rung immediately in front of them. Her face was flushed, her hair had slipped back from her damp temples. It seemed to her as if she must already have climbed down several times the length of the ladder. At every step she had to kick her skirts free.
"Permit me!" said a kind voice in the world of reeling brick walks and dwarfed gooseberry bushes below her.
Sally, with a thump at her heart, looked down to see Dr. Bates lay a firm hand upon the rocking ladder.
Speechless, she finished the descent, reeling a little unsteadily against the doctor"s shoulder as she faced about on the walk. Her face was crimson. To climb down a ladder, with him looking pleasantly up from below, and then to fall into his very arms! Sally shook out her skirts like a furious hen, and walked, with one chilly inclination of the head for acknowledgment of his courtesy, toward the waiting motor.
"Ferdie has promised Bill Bevis that you will spin me over in the motor," said the doctor, a little timidly, when they reached it.
Sally eyed him stonily.
"Ferd--"
"Why, I had promised Bevis that I would look in to-day," pursued the doctor, uncomfortably; "and when they telephoned about it, a few minutes ago, one of the maids said that she believed that you were going right over, and would bring me."
"I have changed my mind," said Sally. "Perhaps you will drive yourself over?"
"I don"t know anything about motors," apologized the doctor, gravely.
"Ferd told one of the maids to say I would?" Sally said pleasantly.
"Very well. Will you get in?"
They got in, Sally driving. They swept in silence past the lawns, and into the wide, white highway. A watering-cart had just pa.s.sed, and the air was fresh and wet. The afternoon was one of exquisite beauty. The steamer from San Francisco was just in, and the road was filled with other motor-cars and smart traps. Sally and the doctor nodded and waved to a score of friends.
"I am as sorry as you are," said the doctor, awkwardly, after the silence had grown very long.
"Don"t mention it," said Sally, her face flaming again. "That"s my brother"s idea of humor. I--I shall stay at the Bevises" overnight."
"I--why, I said I would do that!" said Dr. Bates, hastily. "I just called in to the maid, when she telephoned Bevis, and said, "Ask him if he can put me up overnight." You see, I"ve got my things."
"Well, then, I won"t," said Sally. Her tone was cold, but a side glance at his serious face melted her a little. "This is ALL Ferdie!" she burst out angrily.
"Too bad to make it so important," said the doctor, regretfully.
"I don"t see why you should stay at the Bevises"," said the girl, fretfully. "It looks very odd--when you had come to us. I--I am going to Glen Ellen early to-morrow, anyway. I would hate to have the Bevises suspect--"
"Then I will go back with you," agreed the doctor, pleasantly.
Sally frowned. She opened her lips, but shut them without speaking. She had turned the car into a wide gateway, and a moment later they stopped at a piazza full of young people. The noisy, joyous Bevis girls and boys swarmed rapturously about them.
After an hour of laughter and shouting, Sally and the doctor rose to go, accompanied to the motor by all the young people.
"Ah, you just got in, doctor?" said gentle Mrs. Bevis, with a glance at the suit-cases.
Sally flushed, but the doctor serenely let the misunderstanding go.
There was no good reason to give for the presence of two cases in the car.
"You look quite like an elopement!" said Page Bevis with a joyous shout.
"Put one of the cases in front, Bates, and rest your feet on it,"