"It was," mused Milt. "It was poor and miserable. We had to work
hard--we had to fight for whatever education we got--we had no one to
teach us courtesy."
"Oh now, with your fine old doctor father? Surely he was an
inspiration?" Jeff didn't, this time, trouble to hide the sneer.
"Yes. He was. He gave up the chance to be a rich loafer in order to save
farmers' babies for fees that he never got."
"I'm sure he did. I wish I'd known him. We need to know men like that in
this pink-frosting playing at living we have in cities," Claire said
sweetly--not to Milt but to Jeff.
Mrs. Gilson had ignored them, waiting with the patience of a cat at a
mouse-hole, and she went on, "But you haven't said you'd come, this
evening. Do say you will. I don't suppose Mr. McGollups will care to
dress for dinner?"
With saccharin devotion Milt yearned back, "No, Mrs. Gilson. No. Mr.
McGolwey won't care to dress. He's eccentric."
"But you'll make him come?"
Milt was tactfully beginning to refuse when Gene Gilson at last
exploded, turned purple, covered his dripping, too-red lips with his
handkerchief.
Then, abruptly, Milt hurled at Mrs. Gilson, "All right. We'll come.
Bill'll be awfully funny. He's never been out of a jerkwater burg in his
life, hardly. He's an amusing cuss. He thinks I'm smart! He loves me
like a dog. Oh, he's rich! Ha, ha, ha!"
Milt might have gone on ... if he had, Mr. and Mrs. Gilson would have
gone away, much displeased. But Bill arrived, with some of the worst tea
in the world, and four cups tastefully done in cupids' heads and much
gilt.
Milt made tea, ignoring them, while Bill entertained the Gilsons and
Saxtons with Rabelaisian stories of threshing-time when shirts prickly
with chaff and gritty with dust stuck to sweat-dripping backs; of the
"funny thing" of Milt and Bill being hired to move a garbage-pile and
"swiping" their employer's "mushmelons"; of knotting shirts at the
swimming-hole so that the bawling youngsters had to "chaw beef"; of
drinking beer in the livery-stable at Melrose; of dropping the
water-pitcher from a St. Klopstock hotel window upon the head of the
"constabule" and escaping from him across the lean-to roof.
Mrs. Gilson encouraged him; Bill sat with almost closed eyes, glorying
in the saga of small-town life; Saxton and Gilson did not conceal their
contemptuous grins.
But Claire---- After nervously rubbing the tips of her thumbs with
flickering agitated fingers, she had paid no attention to Bill and the
revelation of Milt's rustic life; she had quietly gone to Milt, to help
him prepare the scanty tea.
She whispered, "Never mind, dear. I don't care. It was all twice as much
fun as being wheeled in lacy prams by cranky nurses, as Jeff and I were.
But I know how you feel. Are you ashamed of having been a prairie
pirate?"