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Without undressing she blew out the candle and curled herself upon the mattress on the floor. At 10:30 o'clock old man Ballinger came out of his house in his stocking feet and leaned over the gate, smoking his pipe. He looked down the big road, white in the moonshine, and rubbed one ankle with the toe of his other foot. It was time for the Fredericksburg mail to come pattering up the road.
And you must admit that for their temporary fall from grace they were sufficiently punished, poor things." "Antoinette, I am surprised." Mrs. Ballinger spoke as severely as Mrs. Abbott. She looked less the Southerner for the moment than the Puritan. "They disgraced both themselves and Society.
"Yes," said old man Ballinger, "thar's a letter for Mrs. Helterskelter, or some sich name. Tommy Ryan brung it over when he come. Her little gal workin' over thar, you say?" "In the hotel," shouted Fritz, as he gathered up the lines; "eleven years old and not bigger as a frankfurter.
Ballinger therefore restricted herself to a formal murmur of regret, and the other members were just grouping themselves comfortably about Osric Dane when the latter, to their dismay, started up from the sofa on which she had been seated. "Oh wait do wait, and I'll go with you!" she called out to Mrs.
Plinth, who, in turn, appeared less sure of herself than usual. "Why, of of the book," she explained. "What book?" snapped Miss Van Vluyck, almost as sharply as Osric Dane. Mrs. Ballinger looked at Laura Glyde, whose eyes were interrogatively fixed on Mrs. Leveret. The fact of being deferred to was so new to the latter that it filled her with an insane temerity.
And this was felt by the other members to be a graceful way of cancelling once for all the club's obligation to Mrs. Roby. Even Mrs. Leveret took courage to speed a timid shaft of irony. "I fancy Osric Dane hardly expected to take a lesson in Xingu at Hillbridge!" Mrs. Ballinger smiled. "When she asked me what we represented do you remember? I wish I'd simply said we represented Xingu!"
She certainly could not afford it herself and keep Ballinger House open, even for brief summer visits; as she might if her home were in New York. Of course Mortimer might make his million, but then again he might not. Certainly there were no present signs of it and she had never seen him so depressed, not even during the panic of nineteen-seven.
Sulky Curtis, who grumbled under Barker's rule, surrendered to Anne without a scowl. When Anne came riding over the Seven Acre field, lazy Ballinger pulled himself together and ploughed through the two last furrows that he would have left for next day in Barker's time. Even for Ballinger and Curtis she had smiles that atoned for her little air of imperious command.
The engineer humps his eyebrows sarcastic, while Ballinger and the lawyer swaps a quiet smile. "Then perhaps we had best stay over and take the deeds back with us," says Ballinger. "Do," snaps Old Hickory. "You can improve the time hunting for your average New Yorker. Here you are, Torchy." Say, he's a game old sport, Mr. Ellins.
"Oh, he looks older, of course, and he has deeper lines and some gray hairs. But he's thin, at least. His figure did not suffer if his face did somewhat. He looks even more interesting at least women would think so. You know we good women always have a fatal weakness for the man who has lived too much." "Speak for yourself, Antoinette." Mrs. Ballinger looked like an effigy of virtue in silver.
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