Page:Arrowsmith - Sinclair Lewis.pdf/241

 "I'm terribly sorry; he and Mama won't be back till eleven. Won't you sit down and cool off a little?"

"Well—" He did sit down, firmly, and tried to make youthful conversation, while Charley produced sentiments suitable, in Charley's opinion, to the aged Dr. Arrowsmith, and Orchid made little purry interested sounds, an art in which she was very intelligent.

"Been, uh, been seeing many of the baseball games?" said Martin.

"Oh, been getting in all I can," said Charley. "How's things going at City Hall? Been nailing a lot of cases of small-pox and winkulus pinkulus and all those fancy diseases?"

"Oh, keep busy," grunted old Dr. Arrowsmith.

He could think of nothing else. He listened while Charley and Orchid giggled cryptically about things which barred him out and made him feel a hundred years old: references to Mamie and Earl, and a violent "Yeh, that's all right, but any time you see me dancing with her you just tell me about it, will yuh!" At the corner, Verbena Pickerbaugh was yelping, and observing, "Now you quit!" to persons unknown.

"Hell! It isn't worth it! I'm going home," Martin sighed, but at the moment Charley screamed, "Well, ta, ta, be good; gotta toddle along."

He was left to Orchid and peace and a silence rather embarrassing.

"It's so nice to be with somebody that has brains and doesn't always try to flirt, like Charley," said Orchid.

He considered, "Splendid! She's going to be just a nice good girl. And I've come to my senses. We'll just have a little chat and I'll go home."

She seemed to have moved nearer. She whispered at him, "I was so lonely, especially with that horrid slangy boy, till I heard your step on the walk. I knew it the second I heard it."

He patted her hand. As his pats were becoming more ardent than might have been expected from the assistant and friend of her father, she withdrew her hand, clasped her knees, and began to chatter.

Always it had been so in the evenings when he had drifted to the porch and found her alone. She was ten times more incalculable than the most complex woman. He managed to feel guilty toward Leora without any of the reputed joys of being guilty.