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He will give us the pleasure of spending the night here." And now Vera's little heart really did jump. She behaved with the delicious wayward grace which she could always command when she chose to command it. No one would have guessed that she had not spoken to Stephen for a week. 'I'm most happy most happy, said Mr Bittenger, with a marked accent and a fine complimentary air.
How nicely Mr Bittenger had thanked her for her gracious hospitality with what meaning he had charged the expression of his deep regret at leaving her! After all, dreams WERE nonsense.
They retired to rest that evening up a staircase whose banisters the industrious hands of Mr Bittenger had entwined with holly and paper festoons, and bade each other a merry Christmas with immense fervour; but in the conjugal chamber Stephen maintained his policy of implacable silence. And, naturally, Vera maintained hers. Could it be expected of her that she should yield?
Can one wonder that Vera's heart, being a superstitious little heart, like all our hearts, should leap when the very next day Stephen turned up with a completely unexpected stranger from New York? Of course, dreams are nonsense! Of course! Still She did not know whether to rejoice or mourn over the fact that Mr Bittenger was not bald.
Tinsley has just brought some boxing-gloves, and master and Mr Bittenger have got their coats off in the dining-room. And they've had the table pushed up by the door, and you never saw such a set-out in all your life ma'am. Vera dismissed Louisa. There it was the dream! They were going to box. Mr Bittenger was doubtless an expert, and she knew that Stephen was not.
Even the English weather, which, it is notorious, has of late shown a sad disposition to imitate, and even to surpass, in mildness the weather of the Riviera at Christmas, decided to oblige Mr Bittenger. At nightfall on Christmas Eve it began to snow gently, but steadily fine, frozen snow.
Before, it had been nothing but a kind of two-roomed cottage. She now erected it into a town hall, with imposing portals, and many windows and rich statuary, and suite after suite of enormous rooms, and marble staircases, and lifts that went up and down. She wished she had never married him. She wished that Mr Bittenger HAD been bald. At dinner everything went with admirable smoothness.
If this was not love-making on a sofa, what could be? Mr Bittenger had certainly missed the Liverpool express on purpose. Of that Vera was convinced. Or, if he had not missed it on purpose, he had missed it under the dictates of the mysterious power of the dream. Those people who chose to believe that dreams are nonsense were at liberty to do so.
Mr Bittenger could not conceive an English Christmas without turkey, mince-pies, plum-pudding, and all the usual indigestiveness. Vera, speaking in a voice which seemed somehow not to be hers, stated that these necessaries of Christmas life would be produced, and Stephen did not say that the very thought of a mince-tart made him ill.
They coquetted for a few moments, as men invariably will, each diffident about giving away the secret, each asserting that the other was younger than himself. 'Well, said Mr Bittenger to Vera, at length, 'what age should you give me? 'I I should give you five years less than Stephen, Vera replied.
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