Page:Willa Cather - The Song of the Lark.djvu/461



HEN Archie and Ottenburg dined with Thea on Saturday evening, they were served downstairs in the hotel dining-room, but they were to have their coffee in her own apartment. As they were going up in the elevator after dinner, Fred turned suddenly to Thea. "And why, please, did you break Landry's amber elephant?"

She looked guilty and began to laugh. "Has n't he got over that yet? I did n't really mean to break it. I was perhaps careless. His things are so over-petted that I was tempted to be careless with a lot of them."

"How can you be so heartless, when they 're all he has in the world?"

"He has me. I 'm a great deal of diversion for him; all he needs. There," she said as she opened the door into her own hall, "I should n't have said that before the elevator boy."

"Even an elevator boy could n't make a scandal about Oliver. He 's such a catnip man."

Dr. Archie laughed, but Thea, who seemed suddenly to have thought of something annoying, repeated blankly, "Catnip man?"

"Yes, he lives on catnip, and rum tea. But he 's not the only one. You are like an eccentric old woman I know in Boston, who goes about in the spring feeding catnip to street cats. You dispense it to a lot of fellows. Your pull seems to be more with men than with women, you know; with seasoned men, about my age, or older. Even on Friday afternoon I kept running into them, old boys I had n't seen for years, thin at the part and thick at the girth, until I stood still in the draft and held my hair on. They 're always there; I hear them talking about you in the