“I should think not! Women do seem to be always talking about health: I suppose they haven't got enough else to think of!”
“That must be it,” she said gayly. “We're an idle lot!”
George had taken off his coat. “I don't like to hint to a lady,” he said, “but I do want to dress before dinner.”
“Don't be long; I've got to do a lot of looking at you, dear!” She kissed him and ran away singing.
But his Aunt Fanny was not so fond; and at the dinner-table there came a spark of liveliness into her eye when George patronizingly asked her what was the news in her own “particular line of sport.”
“What do you mean, Georgie?” she asked quietly.
“Oh I mean: What's the news in the fast set generally? You been causing any divorces lately?”
“No,” said Fanny, the spark in her eye getting brighter. “I haven't been causing anything.”
“Well, what's the gossip? You usually hear pretty much everything that goes on around the nooks and crannies in this town, I hear. What's the last from the gossips' corner, auntie?”
Fanny dropped her eyes, and the spark was concealed, but a movement of her lower lip betokened a tendency to laugh, as she replied. “There hasn't been much gossip lately, except the report that Lucy Morgan and Fred Kinney are engaged—and that's quite old, by this time.”
Undeniably, this bit of mischief was entirely successful, for there was a clatter upon George's plate. “What—what do you think you're talking about?” he gasped.
Miss Fanny looked up innocently. “About the report of Lucy Morgan's engagement to Fred Kinney.”
George turned dumbly to his mother, and Isabel shook her head reassuringly. “People are always starting rumours,” she said. “I haven't paid any attention to this one.”
“But you—you've heard it?” he stammered.
“Oh, one hears all sorts of nonsense, dear. I haven't the slightest idea that it's true.”
“Then you have heard it!”
“I wouldn't let it take my appetite,” his father suggested drily. “There are plenty of girls in the world!”
George turned pale.
“Eat your dinner, Georgie,” his aunt said sweetly. “Food will do you good. I didn't say I knew this rumour was true. I only said I'd heard it.”
“When? When did you hear it!”
“Oh, months ago!” And Fanny found any further postponement of laughter impossible.
“Fanny, you're a hard-hearted creature,” Isabel said gently. “You really are. Don't pay any attention to her, George. Fred Kinney's only a clerk in his uncle's hardware place: he couldn't marry for ages—even if anybody would accept him!”
George breathed tumultuously. “I don't care anything about 'ages'! What's that got to do with it?” he said, his thoughts appearing to be somewhat disconnected. “'Ages,' don't mean anything! I only want to know—I want to know—I want—” He stopped.
“What do you want?” his father asked crossly.
“Why don't you say it? Don't make such a fuss.”
“I'm not—not at all,” George declared, pushing his chair back from the table.
“You must finish your dinner, dear,” his mother urged. “Don't—”
“I have finished. I've eaten all I want. I don't want any more than I wanted. I don't want—I—” He rose, still incoherent. “I prefer—I want—Please excuse me!”
He left the room, and a moment later the screens outside the open front door were heard to slam:
“Fanny! You shouldn't—”
“Isabel, don't reproach me, he did have plenty of dinner, and I only told the truth: everybody has been saying—”
“But there isn't any truth in it.”
“We don't actually know there isn't,” Miss Fanny insisted, giggling. “We've never asked Lucy.”
“I wouldn't ask her anything so absurd!”
“George would,” George's father remarked. “That's what he's gone to do.”
Mr. Minafer was not mistaken: that was what his son had gone to do. Lucy and her father were just rising from their dinner table when the stirred youth arrived at the front door of the new house. It was a cottage, however, rather than a house; and Lucy had taken a free hand with the architect, achieving results in white and green, outside, and white and blue, inside, to such effect of youth and daintiness that her father complained of “too much spring-time!” The whole place, including his own bedroom, was a young damsel's boudoir, he said, so that nowhere could he smoke a cigar without feeling like a ruffian. However, he was smoking when George arrived, and he encouraged George to join him in the pastime, but the caller, whose air was both tense and preoccupied, declined with something like agitation.
“I never smoke—that is, I'm seldom—I mean, no thanks,” he said. “I mean not at all. I'd rather not.”
“Aren't you well, George?” Eugene asked, looking at him in perplexity. “Have you been overworking at college? You do look rather pa—”
“I don't work,” said George. “I mean I don't work. I think, but I don't work. I only work at the end of the term. There isn't much to do.”
Eugene's perplexity was little decreased, and a tinkle of the door-bell afforded him obvious relief. “It's my foreman,” he said, looking at his watch. “I'll take him out in the yard to talk. This is no place for a foreman.” And he departed, leaving the “living room” to Lucy and George. It was a pretty room, white panelled and blue curtained—and no place for a foreman, as Eugene said. There was a grand piano, and Lucy stood leaning back against it, looking intently at George, while her fingers, behind her, absently struck a chord or two. And her dress was the dress for that room, being of blue and white, too; and the high colour in her cheeks was far from interfering with the general harmony of things—George saw with dismay that she was prettier than ever, and naturally he missed the reassurance he might have felt had he been able to guess that Lucy, on her part, was finding him better looking than ever. For, however unusual the scope of George's pride, vanity of beauty was not included; he did not think about his looks.
“What's wrong, George?” she asked softly.
“What do you mean: 'What's wrong?'”
“You're awfully upset about something. Didn't you get though your examination all right?”
“Certainly I did. What makes you think anything's 'wrong' with me?”
“You do look pale, as papa said, and it seemed to me that the way you talked sounded—well, a little confused.”
“'Confused'! I said I didn't care to smoke. What in the world is confused about that?”
“Nothing. But—”
“See here!” George stepped close to her. “Are you glad to see me?”
“You needn't be so fierce about it!” Lucy protested, laughing at his dramatic intensity. “Of course I am! How long have I been looking forward to it?”
“I don't know,” he said sharply, abating nothing of his fierceness. “How long have you?”
“Why—ever since you went away!”
“Is that true? Lucy, is that true?”
“You are funny!” she said. “Of course it's true. Do tell me what's the matter