Page:Henry B. Fuller - Bertram Cope's Year, 1919.djvu/41

 variously gifted household, but he found no appropriate word to say,—or at least uttered none. And none of the three girls made any further comment on his own performance.

Mrs. Phillips accompanied him, on his way out, as far as the hall. She looked up at him questioningly.

"You don't like my poor girls," she said. "You don't find them clever; you don't find them interesting."

"On the contrary," he rejoined, "I have spent a delightful hour." Must he go on and confess that he had developed no particular dexterity in dealing with the younger members of the opposite sex?

"No, you don't care for them one bit," she insisted. She tried to look rebuking, reproachful; yet some shade of expression conveyed to him a hint that her protest was by no means sincere: if he really didn't, it was no loss—it was even a possible gain.

"It's you who don't care for me," he returned. "I'm vieux jeu."

"Nonsense," she rejoined. "If you have a slight past, that only makes you the more atmospheric. Be sure you come again soon, and put in a little more work on the foreground."

Cope, on his way eastward, in the early evening, passed, near the trolley tracks, the Greek lunchcounter, without a thought; he was continuing his letter to "Dear Arthur":

"I think," he wrote, with his mind's finger, "that you might as well come down. I miss you—even more than I thought I should. The term is young, and you