Miss Lulu Bett | Page 4

he fell asleep planning to build a great house and engage her as its servant.
Yet, as he waited, he could not keep his eyes from this photograph. It was Di at her curliest, at her fluffiest, Di conscious of her bracelet, Di smiling. Bobby gazed, his basic aversion to her hard-pressed by a most reluctant pleasure. He hoped that he would not see her, and he listened for her voice.
Mr. Deacon descended upon him with an air carried from his supper hour, bland, dispensing. Well! Let us have it. "What did you wish to see me about?"--with a use of the past tense as connoting something of indirection and hence of delicacy--a nicety customary, yet unconscious. Bobby had arrived in his best clothes and with an air of such formality that Mr. Deacon had instinctively suspected him of wanting to join the church, and, to treat the time with due solemnity, had put him in the parlour until he could attend at leisure.
Confronted thus by Di's father, the speech which Bobby had planned deserted him.
"I thought if you would give me a job," he said defencelessly.
"So that's it!" Mr. Deacon, who always awaited but a touch to be either irritable or facetious, inclined now to be facetious. "Filling teeth?" he would know. "Marrying folks, then?" Assistant justice or assistant dentist--which?
Bobby blushed. No, no, but in that big building of Mr. Deacon's where his office was, wasn't there something ... It faded from him, sounded ridiculous. Of course there was nothing. He saw it now.
There was nothing. Mr. Deacon confirmed him. But Mr. Deacon had an idea. Hold on, he said--hold on. The grass. Would Bobby consider taking charge of the grass? Though Mr. Deacon was of the type which cuts its own grass and glories in its vigour and its energy, yet in the time after that which he called "dental hours" Mr. Deacon wished to work in his garden. His grass, growing in late April rains, would need attention early next month ... he owned two lots--"of course property is a burden." If Bobby would care to keep the grass down and raked ... Bobby would care, accepted this business opportunity, figures and all, thanked Mr. Deacon with earnestness. Bobby's aversion to Di, it seemed, should not stand in the way of his advancement.
"Then that is checked off," said Mr. Deacon heartily.
Bobby wavered toward the door, emerged on the porch, and ran almost upon Di returning from her tea-party at Jenny Plow's.
"Oh, Bobby! You came to see me?"
She was as fluffy, as curly, as smiling as her picture. She was carrying pink, gauzy favours and a spear of flowers. Undeniably in her voice there was pleasure. Her glance was startled but already complacent. She paused on the steps, a lovely figure.
But one would say that nothing but the truth dwelt in Bobby.
"Oh, hullo," said he. "No. I came to see your father."
He marched by her. His hair stuck up at the back. His coat was hunched about his shoulders. His insufficient nose, abundant, loose-lipped mouth and brown eyes were completely expressionless. He marched by her without a glance.
She flushed with vexation. Mr. Deacon, as one would expect, laughed loudly, took the situation in his elephantine grasp and pawed at it.
"Mamma! Mamma! What do you s'pose? Di thought she had a beau----"
"Oh, papa!" said Di. "Why, I just hate Bobby Larkin and the whole school knows it."
Mr. Deacon returned to the dining-room, humming in his throat. He entered upon a pretty scene.
His Ina was darning. Four minutes of grace remaining to the child Monona, she was spinning on one toe with some Bacchanalian idea of making the most of the present. Di dominated, her ruffles, her blue hose, her bracelet, her ring.
"Oh, and mamma," she said, "the sweetest party and the dearest supper and the darlingest decorations and the gorgeousest----"
"Grammar, grammar," spoke Dwight Herbert Deacon. He was not sure what he meant, but the good fellow felt some violence done somewhere or other.
"Well," said Di positively, "they were. Papa, see my favour."
She showed him a sugar dove, and he clucked at it.
Ina glanced at them fondly, her face assuming its loveliest light. She was often ridiculous, but always she was the happy wife and mother, and her r?le reduced her individual absurdities at least to its own.
The door to the bedroom now opened and Mrs. Bett appeared.
"Well, mother!" cried Herbert, the "well" curving like an arm, the "mother" descending like a brisk slap. "Hungry _now?_"
Mrs. Bett was hungry now. She had emerged intending to pass through the room without speaking and find food in the pantry. By obscure processes her son-in-law's tone inhibited all this.
"No," she said. "I'm not hungry."
Now that she was there, she seemed uncertain what to do. She looked from one to another a bit hopelessly, somehow