Myra did not know what to say to this, so she made no answer. After an instant’s abstraction Mr. Whitney crossed over with his furious energy and pressed a button; then almost as if he were dancing he was by her side again, making thin, disparaging gestures with his hands.
“A little minute,” he assured her, “sixty seconds, scarcely more. Here!”
He rushed suddenly to the wall and with some effort lifted a great carved Louis Fourteenth chair and set it down carefully in the geometrical center of the carpet.
“Sit down—won’t you? Sit down! I’ll go get you something. Sixty seconds at the outside.”
She demurred faintly, but he kept on repeating “Sit down!” in such an aggrieved yet hopeful tone that Myra sat down. Instantly her host disappeared.
She sat there for five minutes and a feeling of oppression fell over her. Of all the receptions she had ever received this was decidedly the oddest—for though she had read somewhere that Ludlow Whitney was considered one of the most eccentric figures in the financial world, to find a sallow, elfin little man who, when he walked, danced was rather a blow to her sense of form. Had he gone to get Knowleton! She revolved her thumbs in interminable concentric circles.
Then she started nervously at a quick cough at her elbow. It was Mr. Whitney again. In one hand he held a glass of milk and in the other a blue kitchen bowl full of those hard cubical crackers used in soup.
“Hungry from your trip!” he exclaimed compassionately. “Poor girl, poor little girl, starving!” He brought out this last word with such emphasis that some of the milk plopped gently over the side of the glass.
Myra took the refreshments submissively. She was not hungry, but it had taken him ten minutes to get them so it seemed ungracious to refuse. She sipped gingerly at the milk and ate a cracker, wondering vaguely what to say. Mr. Whitney, however, solved the problem for her by disappearing again—this time by way of the wide stairs—four steps at a hop—the back of his bald head gleaming oddly for a moment in the half dark.
Minutes passed. Myra was torn between resentment and bewilderment that she should be sitting on a high comfortless chair in the middle of this big hall munching crackers. By what code was a visiting fiancée ever thus received!
Her heart gave a jump of relief as she heard a familiar whistle on the stairs. It was Knowleton at last, and when he came in sight he gasped with astonishment.
“Myra!”
She carefully placed the bowl and glass on the carpet and rose, smiling.
“Why,” he exclaimed, “they didn’t tell me you were here!”
“Your father—welcomed me.”
“Lordy! He must have gone upstairs and forgotten all about it. Did he insist on your eating this stuff? Why didn’t you just tell him you didn’t want any?”
“Why—I don’t know.”
“You mustn’t mind Father, dear. He’s forgetful and a little unconventional in some ways, but you’ll get used to him.”
He pressed a button and a butler appeared.
“Show Miss Harper to her room and have her bag carried up—and her trunk if it isn’t there already.” He turned to Myra. “Dear, I’m awfully sorry I didn’t know you were here. How long have you been waiting?”
“Oh, only a few minutes.”
It had been twenty at the least, but she saw no advantage in stressing it. Nevertheless it had given her an oddly uncomfortable feeling.
Half an hour later as she was hooking the last eye on her dinner dress there was a knock on the door.
“It’s Knowleton, Myra; if you’re about ready we’ll go in and see Mother for a minute before dinner.”
She threw a final approving glance at her reflection in the mirror and turning out the light joined him in the hall. He led her down a central passage which crossed to the other wing of the house, and stopping before a closed door he pushed it open and ushered Myra into the weirdest room upon which her young eyes had ever rested.
It was a large luxurious boudoir, paneled, like the lower hall, in dark English oak and bathed by several lamps in a mellow orange glow that blurred its every outline into misty amber. In a great armchair piled high with cushions and draped with a curiously figured cloth of silk reclined a very sturdy old lady with bright white hair, heavy features, and an air about her of having been there for many years. She lay somnolently against the cushions, her eyes half-closed, her great bust rising and falling under her black negligee.
But it was something else that made the room remarkable, and Myra’s eyes scarcely rested on the woman, so engrossed was she in another feature of her surroundings. On the carpet, on the chairs and sofas, on the great canopied bed and on the soft Angora rug in front of the fire sat and sprawled and slept a great army of white poodle dogs. There must have been almost two dozen of them, with curly hair twisting in front of their wistful eyes and wide yellow bows flaunting from their necks. As Myra and Knowleton entered a stir went over the dogs; they raised one-and-twenty cold black noses in the air and from one-and-twenty little throats went up a great clatter of staccato barks until the room was filled with such an uproar that Myra stepped back in alarm.
But at the din the somnolent fat lady’s eyes trembled open and in a low husky voice that was in itself oddly like a bark she snapped out: “Hush that racket!” and the clatter instantly ceased. The two or three poodles round the fire turned their silky eyes on each other reproachfully, and lying down with little sighs faded out on the white Angora rug; the tousled ball on the lady’s lap dug his nose into the crook of an elbow and went back to sleep, and except for the patches of white wool scattered about the room Myra would have thought it all a dream.
“Mother,” said Knowleton after an instant’s pause, “this is Myra.”
From the lady’s lips flooded one low husky word: “Myra?”
“She’s visiting us, I told you.”
Mrs. Whitney raised a large arm and passed her hand across her forehead wearily.
“Child!” she said—and Myra started, for again the voice was like a low sort of growl—“you want to marry my son Knowleton?”
Myra felt that this was putting the tonneau before the radiator, but she nodded. “Yes, Mrs. Whitney.”
“How old are you?” This very suddenly.
“I’m twenty-one, Mrs. Whitney.”
“Ah—and you’re from Cleveland?”
This was in what was surely a series of articulate barks.
“Yes, Mrs. Whitney.”
“Ah——”
Myra was not certain whether this last ejaculation was conversation or merely a groan, so she did not answer.
“You’ll excuse me if I don’t appear downstairs,” continued Mrs. Whitney; “but when we’re in the East I seldom leave this room and my dear little doggies.”
Myra nodded and a conventional health question was trembling on her lips when she caught Knowleton’s warning glance and checked it.
“Well,” said Mrs. Whitney with an air of finality, “you seem like a very nice girl. Come in again.”
“Good-night, Mother,” said Knowleton.
“’Night!” barked Mrs. Whitney drowsily, and her eyes sealed gradually up as her head receded back again into