"Better than painting?" I asked. But he ignored my gibe and swelled up
alarmingly in order to sigh.
"This is the worst day of the year for me," he affirmed, staring
straight ahead, "and the longest. Look at that crazy clock over there.
If you want to see your life passing away, if you want to see the steps
by which you are marching to eternity, watch that clock marking the
time. Look at that infernal hand staying quiet for sixty seconds and
then jumping forward to catch up with the procession. Ugh!"
"See here, Jim," I said, leaning forward, "you're not well. You can't go
through the rest of the day like this. I know what you'll do; you'll
go home to play Grieg on the pianola, and you won't eat any dinner." He
looked guilty.
"Not Grieg," he protested feebly. "Beethoven."
"You're not going to do either," I said with firmness. "You are going
right home to unpack those new draperies that Harry Bayles sent you from
Shanghai, and you are going to order dinner for eight--that will be two
tables of bridge. And you are not going to touch the pianola."
He did not seem enthusiastic, but he rose and picked up his hat, and
stood looking down at me where I sat on an old horse-hair covered sofa.
"I wish to thunder I had married you!" he said savagely. "You're the
finest girl I know, Kit, WITHOUT EXCEPTION, and you are going to throw
yourself away on Jack Manning, or Max, or some other--"
"Nothing of the sort," I said coldly, "and the fact that you didn't
marry me does not give you the privilege of abusing my friends. Anyhow,
I don't like you when you speak like that."
Jim took me to the door and stopped there to sigh.
"I haven't been well," he said heavily. "Don't eat, don't sleep.
Wouldn't you think I'd lose flesh? Kit"--he lowered his voice
solemnly--"I have gained two pounds!"
I said he didn't look it, which appeared to comfort him somewhat, and,
because we were old friends, I asked him where Bella was. He said he
thought she was in Europe, and that he had heard she was going to marry
Reggie Wolfe. Then he signed again, muttered something about ordering
the funeral baked meats to be prepared and left me.
That was my entire share in the affair. I was the victim, both of
circumstances and of their plot, which was mad on the face of it.
During the entire time they never once let me forget that I got up the
dinner, that I telephoned around for them. They asked me why I couldn't
cook--when not one of them knew one side of a range from the other. And
for Anne Brown to talk the way she did--saying I had always been crazy
about Jim, and that she believed I had known all along that his aunt was
coming--for Anne to talk like that was sheer idiocy. Yes, there was an
aunt. The Japanese butler started the trouble, and Aunt Selina carried
it along.