Page:Thunder on the Left (1925).djvu/61

 "I didn't like his looks," George mumbled.

This wasn't true. George had liked his looks, but he had resented (as must every man burdened with many perplexities) that gay and careless air. He looks as if he didn't have a thing on earth to worry about, George thought. And he comes floating in here, with casual ease, among the thousand interlocking tensions of George's difficulties, to gaze with untroubled eye on his host's restless alertness. Or was this some sort of joke that Phyllis was putting over on him?

"I'm going to put the two older children on the sleeping porch, so Ben and Ruth can have their room. Miss Clyde will have to go on this couch."

"How about me?"

"Well, we can sleep together I suppose. It won't kill us, for a few nights."

Not if I know it, George thought. That old walnut bedstead, with the deep valley in the middle, so that we both keep rolling against one another. Unless you clutch the post and lie on a slope all night. Besides, Phyl is so changeable in temperature. When she goes to bed she's chilly and wants to kindle her feet against you. Then by and by she gets warmed up and it's like sleeping with a hot bottle five feet long. On a night in July, too. Whenever I get comfortable, she