Part 25

“So you're back at last, are you, Jack?” drawled Jane in her lazy, good-natured way. “Come and meet Miss Bishop. Carroll, I want to present Mr. Orde.”

Orde bowed ceremoniously into the penumbra cast by the lamp's broad shade. The girl inclined gracefully her small head with the glossy hair. The Incubus, his thin hands clasped on his knee, his sallow face twisted in one of its customary wry smiles, held to the edge of his chair with characteristic pertinacity.

“Well, Walter,” Orde addressed him genially, “are you having a good time?”

“Yes-indeed!” replied the Incubus as though it were one word.

His chair was planted squarely to exclude all others. Orde surveyed the situation with good-humour.

“Going to keep the other fellow from getting a chance, I see.”

“Yes-indeed!” replied the Incubus.

Orde bent over, and with great ease lifted Incubus, chair, and all, and set him facing Mignonne Smith and the croquet-ball.

“Here, Mignonne,” said he, “I've brought you another assistant.”

He returned to the lamp, to find the girl, her dark eyes alight with amusement, watching him intently. She held the tip of a closed fan against her lips, which brought her head slightly forward in an attitude as though she listened. Somehow there was about her an air of poise, of absolute balanced repose quite different from Jane's rather awkward statics, and in direct contrast to Mignonne's dynamics.

“Walter is a very bright man in his own line,” said Orde, swinging forward a chair, “but he mustn't be allowed any monopolies.”

“How do you know I want him so summarily removed?” the girl asked him, without changing either her graceful attitude of suspended motion or the intentness of her gaze.

“Well,” argued Orde, “I got him to say all he ever says to any girl--'Yes-indeed!'--so you couldn't have any more conversation from him. If you want to look at him, why, there he is in plain sight. Besides, I want to talk to you myself.”

“Do you always get what you want?” inquired the girl.

Orde laughed.

“Any one can get anything he wants, if only he wants it bad enough,” he asserted.

The girl pondered this for a moment, and finally lowered and opened her fan, and threw back her head in a more relaxed attitude.

“Some people,” she amended. “However, I forgive you. I will even flatter you by saying I am glad you came. You look to have reached the age of discretion. I venture to say that these boys' idea of a lively evening is to throw bread about the table.”

Orde flushed a little. The last time he had supped at Jane Hubbard's, that was exactly what they did do.

“They are young, of course,” he said, “and you and I are very old and wise. But having a noisy, good time isn't such a great crime--or is it where you came from?”

The girl leaned forward, a sparkle of interest in her eyes.

“Are you and I going to fight?” she demanded.

“That depends on you,” returned Orde squarely, but with perfect good-humour.

They eyed each other a moment. Then the girl closed her fan, and leaned forward to touch him on the arm with it.

“You are quite right not to allow me to say mean things about your friends, and I am a nasty little snip.”

Orde bowed with sudden gravity.

“And they do throw bread,” said he.

They both laughed. She leaned back with a movement of satisfaction, seeming to sink into the shadows.