Page:The Soft Side (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1900).djvu/292

284 be a new friendship that has kept him over. It's the devotion of the Dedricks,' Lavinia said. 'He's travelling with them.'

Once more I wondered. 'Do you mean they're taking him about?'

'Yes—they've invited him.'

No, indeed, I reflected—he wasn't proud. But what I said was: 'Who in the world are the Dedricks?'

'Kind, good people whom last month he accidentally met. He was walking some Swiss pass—a long, rather stupid one, I believe, without his aunt and his cousin, who had gone round some other way and were to meet him somewhere. It came on to rain in torrents, and while he was huddling under a shelter he was overtaken by some people in a carriage who kindly made him get in. They drove him, I gather, for several hours; it began an intimacy, and they've continued to be charming to him.'

I thought a moment. 'Are they ladies?'

Her own imagination meanwhile had also strayed a little. 'I think about forty.'

'Forty ladies?'

She quickly came back. 'Oh no; I mean Mrs. Dedrick is.'

'About forty? Then Miss Dedrick'

'There isn't any Miss Dedrick.'

'No daughter?'

'Not with them, at any rate. No one but the husband.'

I thought again. 'And how old is he?'

Lavinia followed my example. 'Well, about forty, too.'

'About forty-two?' We laughed, but 'That's all right!' I said; and so, for the time, it seemed.

He continued absent, none the less, and I saw Lavinia repeatedly, and we always talked of him, though this represented a greater concern with his affairs than I had really supposed myself committed to. I had never sought the acquaintance of his father's people, nor seen either his aunt or his cousin, so that the account given by these relatives of