Mr. Boltwood went to bed in the Beaches' guest-room. Mrs. Beach gave
Claire and Milt lunch, with thin toast and thin china, on a porch from
which an arroyo dropped down for a hundred feet. Fir trees scented the
air, and a talking machine played the same Russian music that was
popular that same moment in New York. And the Beaches knew people who
knew Claire.
Claire was thinking. These people were genuine aristocrats, while Jeff
Saxton, for all his family and his assumptions about life, was the
eternal climber. Milt, who had been uncomfortable with Jeff, was serene
and un-self-conscious with the Beaches, and the doctor gratefully took
his advice about his stationary gas engine. "He's rather like the
Beaches in his simplicity--yes, and his ability to do anything if he
considers it worth while," she decided.
After lunch, when the doctor and his wife had to trot off to a patient,
Claire proposed, "Let's walk up to that ledge of rock and see the view,
shall we, Milt?"
"Yes! And keep an eye on the road for Pinky. The poor nut, he hasn't
showed up. So reckless; hope he hasn't driven the Teal off the road."
She crouched at the edge of a rock, where she would have been
frightened, a month before, and looked across the main road to a creek
in a pine-laced gully. He sat beside her, elbows on knees.
"Those Beaches--their kin are judges and senators and college
Presidents, all over New England," she said. "This doctor must be the
grandson of the ambassador, I fancy."
"Honest? I thought they were just regular folks. Was I nice?"
"Of course you were."
"Did I--did I wash my paws and sit up and beg?"
"No, you aren't a little dog. I'm that. You're the big mastiff that
guards the house, while I run and yip." She was turned toward him,
smiling. Her hand was beside him. He touched the back of it with his
forefinger, as though he was afraid he might soil it.
There seemed to be no reason, but he was trembling as he stammered,
"I--I--I'm d-darn glad I didn't know they were anybody, or 'd have been
as bad as a flivver driver the first time he tries a t-twelve-cylinder
machine. G-gee your hand is little!"
She took it back and inspected it. "I suppose it is. And pretty
useless."
"N-no, it isn't, but your shoes are. Why don't you wear boots when
you're out like this?" A flicker of his earlier peremptoriness came into
his voice. She resented it: "My shoes are perfectly sensible! I will not wear those horrible
vegetarian uplift sacks on my feet!"
"Your shoes may be all right for New York, but you're not going to New
York for a while. You've simply got to see some of this country while
you're out here--British Columbia and Alaska."