"Oh, Amy, the fair Patricia has another victim!" and laughed rather shrilly. Suddenly she rapped the table with the handle of a knife.

"Stop it!" she cried to the company at large. "You're making too much noise!"

They all turned to her except one youth who was too noisily busy with his partner to have heard her. Failing in another attempt to get his attention, Mrs. Morrell picked up a chunk of French bread and hurled it at him.

"Good shot!" "Bravo!" "Encore!" came a burst of applause, as the bread, largely by accident, took him squarely between the eyes.

The youth, though astonished, was game. He retaliated in kind. Keith whipped up an empty plate and intercepted it. The youth's partner came to his a.s.sistance. Keith, a plate in either hand, deftly protected Mrs.

Morrell from the flying missiles. The implied challenge was instantly accepted by all. The air was full of bread. Keith's dexterity was tested to the utmost, but he came through the battle with flying colours. Everybody threw bread. There was much explosive laughter, that soon became fairly exhausting. The battle ceased, both because the combatants were out of ammunition, and because they were too weak from mirth to proceed. Keith with elaborate mock gallantry turned and presented Mrs. Morrell with the two plates.

"The spoils of war!" he told her.

"He should be decorated for conspicuous gallantry on the field of battle!" cried some one.

The idea took. But they could find nothing appropriate until Teeny McFarlane deliberately stepped up on the table and broke from the gla.s.s chandelier one of its numerous dangling prisms. This called forth a mild protest from Morrell--"Oh, I say!"--which was drowned in a wild shriek of delight. The process of stepping down from the table tilted Teeny's wide skirts so that for an instant a slim silken leg was plainly visible as far as the knee. "Oh! oh!" cried every one. Some pretended to be shocked, and covered their faces with spread fingers; others feigned to try for another look. Teeny was quite unperturbed.

Keith was the centre of attention and a great success. But there were no more tete-a-tetes. Mrs. Morrell managed to convey the idea that she was displeased, and Keith was of a sufficiently generous and ingenuous disposition to be intrigued by the fact. He had no chance to probe the matter. In a moment or so Mrs. Morrell rose and strolled toward the drawing-room. The others straggled after her. She rather liked thus to emphasize her lack of convention as a hostess, making a pose of never remembering the proper thing to do. Now she moved here and there, laughing her shrill rather mirthless laugh, calling everybody "dearie,"

uttering abrupt little plat.i.tudes. Keith found himself left behind, and rather out in the cold. The company had quite frankly segregated itself into couples. The room was well adapted to this, filled as it was with comfortable chairs arranged with apparent carelessness two by two. The men lighted cigars. Keith saw Nan's eyes widen at this. She was sitting near the fire, and Sansome had penned her in beyond the possibility of invasion by a third. At this date smoking was a more or less doubtfully considered habit, and in the best society men smoked only in certain rigidly specified circ.u.mstances. In a drawing-room such an action might be considered the fair equivalent to powdering the feminine nose.

In such a condition, Keith was left rather awkwardly alone, and was fairly thrust upon a fict.i.tious interest in a photograph alb.u.m, at which he glowered for some moments. Then by a well-planned and skilfully executed flank movement he caught Mrs. Morrell.

"Look here," he demanded; "what has the standing army done to deserve abandonment in a hostile country?"

But she looked at him directly, without response to his playful manner.

"My friend," she said, "this is a pretty free and easy town, as no doubt you have observed, and society is very mixed. But we haven't yet come to receiving women like Mrs. Sherwood, or relishing their being mentioned to us."

"Why, what's the matter with her?" demanded Keith, astonished. "Is she as far from respectability as all that?"

"Respectable! That word isn't understood in San Francisco." She appeared suddenly to soften. "You're a dear innocent boy, so you are, and you've got a dear innocent little wife, and I'll have to look out for you."

Before the deliberate and superior mockery in her eyes as well as in her voice, Keith felt somehow like a small boy. He was stung to a momentary astonishing fury.

"By G.o.d--" he began, and checked himself with difficulty.

She smiled at him slowly.

"Perhaps I didn't mean all of that," she said; "perhaps only half of it," she added with significance. "My personal opinion is that you are likely to be a curly haired little devil; and when you look at me like that, I'm glad we're not alone."

She looked at him an enigmatic moment, then turned away from the table near which they had been standing. "Come, help me break up some of this 'twosing,'" she said.

Shortly after this the party dispersed. Mrs. Morrell said good-bye to them carelessly, or not at all, according as it happened.

"You must come again, come often," she told the Keiths. "It's pretty dull unless you make your own fun." She was half sleepily conventional, her lids heavy. "Perhaps we can have some music soon," she added. The words were careless, but she shot Keith an especial gleam.

The Keiths walked sociably home together, almost in silence. Keith, after his habit, super-excited with all the fun, the row, and the half-guilty boyish feeling of having done a little something he ought not to have done, did not want to seem too enthusiastic.

"Jolly crowd," he remarked.

"They were certainly noisy enough," said Nan indifferently; then after a moment, "Where _do_ you suppose some of them get their clothes?"

Keith's mind was full of the excitement of the evening. He found himself reviewing the company, appraising it, wondering about it. Was Teeny McFarlane as gay as she appeared? He had never seen women smoke before; but that dark girl with the red thing in her hair puffed a cigarette. Perhaps she was Spanish--he had not met her. And Mrs.

Morrell--hanged if he quite dared make her out--it wouldn't do to jump to conclusions nor too hastily to apply Eastern standards; this was a new country, fatal to make a fool mistake; well-built creature, by gad--

Nan interrupted his thoughts. He came to with a start.

"I think we'd better put the big armchair in the front room, after all," she was saying.

XII

Next morning Keith allayed what little uneasiness his conscience might harbour by remarking, as he adjusted his collar:

"Mrs. Morrell is an amusing type, don't you think? She's a bit vulgar, but she seems good hearted. Wonder what colour her hair used to be?"

"I suppose they are all right," said Nan. "They are a little rowdy.

They gave me a headache."

Illogically rehabilitated in his own self-esteem, Keith went on dressing. He was "on" to Mrs. Morrell; her methods were pretty obvious.

Wonder if she thought she had really fooled him? Next time he would be on guard and beat her at her own game. She was not a woman to his taste, anyway--he glanced admiringly at Nan's clean profile against the light--but she was full of vitality, she was keen, she was br.i.m.m.i.n.g with the joy of life.

The long drive over the Peninsula to the sea and back, the episode of the Spanish people, the rowdy supper party, had one effect, however: it had made so decided a break in the routine that Keith found himself thrust quite outside it. He had worked feverishly all the week, at about double speed; and in ordinary course would have gone on working feverishly at double speed for another week. Now, suddenly, the thought was irksome. He did not a.n.a.lyze this; but, characteristically, discovered an irrefutable reason for not going on with it. They rescued Gringo from Sam's care, and drove up to the house. On the way Keith said:

"Look here, Nan; do you suppose you and Wing can get on all right this morning? All the heavy work is done. I really ought to be settling the office and getting some lines laid for business."

"Why, of course we can get on, silly!" she rejoined. "This isn't your job, anyway. Of course you ought to attend to your business."

Keith again consulted Palmer, Cook & Co. The same clerk showed him offices. He was appalled at the rents. Even a miserable little back room in the obscurer blocks commanded a sum higher than he had antic.i.p.ated paying. After looking at a dozen, he finally decided on a front room in the Merchants' Exchange Building. This was one of the most expensive, but Keith was tired of looking. The best is the greatest economy in the long run, he told himself, and with a lawyer, new-come, appearances count for much in getting clients. Must get the clients, though, to support this sort of thing! The rest of the morning he spent buying furniture.

About noon he walked back to the Bella Union. His horse and buggy were not hitched to the rail, so he concluded Nan had not yet returned for lunch. Mrs. Sherwood, however, was seated in a rocker at the sunny end of the long veranda. She looked most attractive, her small smooth head bent over some sort of fancywork. Before she looked up Keith had leisure to note the poise of her head and shoulders, the fine long lines of her figure, and the arched-browed serenity of her eyes.

Different type this from the full-breasted Morrell, more--more patrician! Rather absurd in view of their respective places in society, but a fact. Keith found himself swiftly speculating on Mrs. Sherwood's origin and experience. She was endowed with a new glamour because of Mrs. Morrell's enigmatic remark the evening before, and also--for Keith was very human--with a new attraction. Feeling vaguely and boyishly devilish, Keith stopped.

She nodded at him, laying her work aside.

"You are practically invisible." she told him.

"Making ourselves a habitation. Seen Mrs. Keith?"

"No. I don't think she's come in."

Keith hesitated, then:

"I think I'll go up to the house for her."

Mrs. Sherwood nodded, and resumed her work calmly, without further remark.

At the house Keith found Nan, her ap.r.o.n on, her hair done up under a dust cap, very busy.