Miss Lulu Bett | Page 4

she fastened in her gown
on her flat chest.
Outside were to be seen the early stars. It is said that if our sun were as
near to Arcturus as we are near to our sun, the great Arcturus would
burn our sun to nothingness.
* * * * *
In the Deacons' parlour sat Bobby Larkin, eighteen. He was in pain all
over. He was come on an errand which civilisation has contrived to
make an ordeal.

Before him on the table stood a photograph of Diana Deacon, also
eighteen. He hated her with passion. At school she mocked him, aped
him, whispered about him, tortured him. For two years he had hated her.
Nights 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