Page:Angna Enters - Among the Daughters.djvu/436

 "I wish I were going with you," she screamed, overcome with a feeling of lonesomeness.

"That is all I wanted to hear, my darling," he shouted back over the ship's band and three mournful bellows of sailing.

She nodded, showed her teeth to seem gay, and waved, swept into the emotional current which seemed to be taking everything she wanted across the ocean. The last rope was released, and she was caught in a mesh of colored serpentine as a widening distance of oily water churned between them.

"It would seem that you have been too preoccupied basking in réclame to pay any attention to me," Figente complained from his bed a few days later.

"You look awful," Lucy stated factually, observing his plucked-chicken appearance.

"But not as bad as a few days ago," Vida consoled, unable to be as frank as Lucy.

"You'd better stay in bed for a couple of months," Lucy admonished.

"It's my kidneys," Figente confided, happy at having an audience, "they simply refuse to cooperate and I pamper them so."

"Well, this is a nice room to be sick in now. At least you haven't those stinking monkeys and birds any more. But you ought to open the windows and get some fresh air. I brought you some nice spring flowers to make you feel better."

"You are absolutely right, my dear, though you yourself might use a drop less of perfume. Ring for Denis and tell him what to do about the flowers of spring tra-la-la, and what you two want to drink. The very thought of any liquid appals me."

"You ought to diet, you're too fat," Lucy continued relentlessly.

"That's what my physician said. But your bedside manner is less tactful."

Let that be a lesson to me, Vida thought. Lucy is better for him than I because she is frank while I try to spare him with roundabout hints to take care of himself. As when she took care of me, she is the perfect nurse, always on the side of life, except only about herself these days.

"Now tell me what you are doing?" he asked, snuggling into the feathers more comfortably than he had felt for a week. "Boswell tells me you turned Judock down, and quite right. It's a pity we aren't in 424