pg8867 [21]
"You be ready at ten minutes after two."
"No, I won't."
"Yes, you will!"
"Yes," she said, "I will!" And her partner for the next dance arrived, breathless with searching.
"Don't forget I've got the third from now," George called after her.
"I won't."
"And every third one after that."
"I know!" she called, over her partner's shoulder, and her voice was amused—but meek.
When "the third from now" came, George presented himself before her without any greeting, like a brother, or a mannerless old friend. Neither did she greet him, but moved away with him, concluding, as she went, an exchange of badinage with the preceding partner: she had been talkative enough with him, it appeared. In fact, both George and Miss Morgan talked much more to every one else that evening, than to each other; and they said nothing at all at this time. Both looked preoccupied, as they began to dance, and preserved a gravity, of expression to the end of the number. And when "the third one after that" came, they did not dance, but went back to the gallery stairway, seeming to have reached an understanding without any verbal consultation, that this suburb was again the place for them.
"Well," said George, coolly, when they were seated, "what did you say your name was?"
"Morgan."
"Funny name!"
"Everybody else's name always is."
"I didn't mean it was really funny," George explained. "That's just one of my crowd's bits of horsing at college. We always say 'funny name' no matter what it is. I guess we're pretty fresh sometimes; but I knew your name was Morgan because my mother said so downstairs. I meant: what's the rest of it?"
"Lucy."
He was silent.
"Is 'Lucy' a funny name, too?" she inquired.
"No. Lucy's very much all right!" he said, and he went so far as to smile. Even his Aunt Fanny admitted that when George smiled "in a certain way" he was charming.
"Thanks about letting my name be Lucy," she said.
"How old are you?" George asked.
"I don't really know, myself."
"What do you mean: you don't really know yourself?"
"I mean I only know what they tell me. I believe them, of course, but believing isn't really knowing. You believe some certain day is your birthday—at least, I suppose you do—but you don't really know it is because you can't remember."
"Look here!" said George. "Do you always talk like this?"
Miss Lucy Morgan laughed forgivingly, put her young head on one side, like a bird, and responded cheerfully: "I'm willing to learn wisdom. What are you studying in school?"
"College!"
"At the university! Yes. What are you studying there?"
George laughed. "Lot o' useless guff!"
"Then why don't you study some useful guff?"
"What do you mean: 'useful'?"
"Something you'd use later, in your business or profession?"
George waved his hand impatiently. "I don't expect to go into any 'business or profession."
"No?"
"Certainly not!" George was emphatic, being sincerely annoyed by a suggestion which showed how utterly she failed to comprehend the kind of person he was.
"Why not?" she asked mildly.
"Just look at 'em!" he said, almost with bitterness, and he made a gesture presumably intended to indicate the business and professional men now dancing within range of vision. "That's a fine career for a man, isn't it! Lawyers, bankers, politicians! What do they get out of life, I'd like to know! What do they ever know about real things? Where do they ever get?"
He was so earnest that she was surprised and impressed. Evidently he had deep-seated ambitions, for he seemed to speak with actual emotion of these despised things which were so far beneath his planning for the future. She had a vague, momentary vision of Pitt, at twenty-one, prime minister of England; and she spoke, involuntarily in a lowered voice, with deference:
"What do you want to be?" she asked.
George answered promptly.
"A yachtsman," he said.
Chapter VI
Having thus, in a word, revealed his ambition for a career above courts, marts, and polling booths, George breathed