Page:The Professor's House - Willa Cather.pdf/114

 “Why don’t you journalists tell the truth about it in print?” Louie asked him. “It’s a case where you could do something.”

“And lose my job? Not much! This country’s split in two, socially, and I don’t know if it’s ever coming together. It’s not so hard on me, I can drink hard liquor. But you and the Professor like wine and fancy stuff.”

“Oh, it’s nothing to us! We’re going to France for the summer,” Louie put his arm round his wife and rubbed his cheek against hers, saying caressingly, “and drink Burgundy, Burgundy, Burgundy!”

“Please take me with you, Louie,” Mrs. St. Peter pleaded, to distract him from his wife. Nothing made the McGregors so uncomfortable and so wrathful as the tender moments which sometimes overtook the Marselluses in public.

“We are going to take you, and Papa too. That’s our plan. I take him for safety. If I travelled on the Continent alone with two such handsome women, it wouldn’t be tolerated. There would be a trumped-up quarrel, and a stiletto, and then somebody would be a widow,” turning again to his wife.

“Come here, Louie.” Mrs. St. Peter beckoned him. “I have a confession to make. Pm afraid there’s no dinner for you to-night.”

“No dinner for me?”

“No. There’s nothing either you or Godfrey