The Hearts Kingdom | Page 8

widow in Goodloets and consequently is most interesting to the masculine world at present.
"Let's start now, so as to give the chicken plenty of time to get into the frying pan and over the fire," said Hampton, who is always the practical member to bring up the details of any situation.
"I'm just from the tennis courts and I'll have to stop to dress, I'm afraid," said Letitia meekly, as if she felt sure of a storm of remonstrance.
"People don't dress to dance these days, Letitia," said Billy, with the greatest innocence of mien and expression, a manner he always uses in speaking to Letitia's rather literal directness and in which he delights greatly. "They undress. You are unclothed enough as to ankles and if you roll the sleeves of your tennis shirt to your shoulders, take off your collar and tuck in the flaps, it will be enough to satisfy our cravings for fashionable and suitable attire. We really want fried chicken rather than chicken--"
"That will do, Billy," Letitia answered him with gentle firmness.
"That was just what I remarked, Letitia dear. That will do, for we want chicken dressed with cream gravy and don't care about any swathed in chiffon. And furthermore--"
"Do hush, Billy; look who's coming," Jessie interrupted him, and there before my eyes I saw my entire group of friends begin to preen themselves into new beings. Letitia smoothed down her skirts a fraction of an inch, rolled down her sleeves another fraction and pushed back into her braids a brown lock that was rioting across her brow. Jessie shook out her muslin ruffles, reefed a fold of net higher across her neck, and pinned it in place with a jeweled pin, while Hampton's and Billy's and Cliff's expressions and poses of countenance and bodies suddenly fell into lines of decorum.
"Great Smokes! We all forgot it was prayer meeting to-night, and it'll be no trotting the fox for ours," Billy groaned, while he rose to his feet with a smile of angelic sweetness. "Hello, Parson! We were just beginning to think about you," was his greeting to the Sacred Jaguar who had come through the garden and around the house. I felt sure that he had heard Billy's plaint of disappointment about the dance, for there was a quick glint of the amethysts as he halted and stood on the walk below us and smiled up at us.
"I welcomed Miss Powers for breakfast, and now I find I want to come over and do it again for tea," he said, and as I was perfectly cool, sober and in my right mind at the moment he spoke, I had to concede that his voice was the most wonderful I had ever heard, and something in me made me resent it as well as the curious veneer that had spread over my friends at his entry upon the scene. There they stood and sat, six perfectly rational, fairly moral, representative free and equal citizens, cowed by the representative of something that they neither understood nor cared about, and it made me furious. They all wanted to go to the Club to dance, to do the natural, usual, perfectly harmless thing, and they were being constrained. If they had wanted to go to the prayer meeting as they wanted to dance, they would have been natural and joyful and eager about it.
"I resent, even I resent people's being bored with the God they think exists, and I think it is disrespectful to go into His presence like that," I said to myself, and then I suddenly determined to begin my rescue work for the religiously involved, and now I felt was the appointed time. Also I felt the excitement that comes from turning and facing the foe which has pursued.
"I'm glad you came over, Mr. Goodloe," I said with nice, cool friendliness in my voice. "Billy was just planning a glorious fox-trot for this evening and then suddenly remembered with dismay that you were to have your--entertainment at the Club to-night. Couldn't we--we make some sort of compromise? Or at least couldn't you cut your--prayers short so he can get in an hour or two of his favorite pleasure after--after duty well done?" As I spoke I had come to the edge of the steps and thus stood alone above him, looking down on him with a kind of cool aloofness as if he belonged to another world, while I heard all of his recent converts grouped back of me give little gasps of dismay.
CHAPTER III
THE GAUNTLET
Was that young Methodist minister crushed by my plainly intended gauntlet flung down to him? He was not.
"I'm glad I came over in time to put Billy out of his misery," he answered, smiling up at me with a quick comprehension that was enraging.