Page:The Professor's House - Willa Cather.pdf/83

 among other diversions, we shall attend your lectures."

The Professor's eyebrows rose. "Bus-man's holiday for the ladies, I should say."

"But not for me. Remember, I wasn't in your I'd give a good deal if I'd had the chance!" Louie said somewhat classes, like Scott and Outland. plaintively. "So you must make it up to me."

"Come if you wish. Lectures seem to me a rather grim treat, Louie."

"Not to me. With a wink of encouragement I'll go on to Boston with you next winter, when you give the Lowell lectures."

"Would you, really? Next year's a long way off. Now I must get clean. I've been working in my other-house garden, and I'm scarcely fit to have tea with a beautiful lady and a smartly dressed gentleman. What am I to do about that garden in the end, Lillian? Destroy it? Or leave it to the mercy of the next tenants?"

As he went upstairs he turned at the bend of the staircase and looked back at them, again bending over their little box. Mrs. St. Peter was wearing the white silk crêpe that had been the most successful of her summer dresses, and an orchid velvet ribbon about her shining hair. She wouldn't have made herself look quite so well if Louie hadn't been coming, he reflected. Or was it that he wouldn't have noticed it if Louie hadn't been there? A man