She glanced at the girl and moved a bowl of salad nearer Elim
Meikeljohn. "Miss Rosemary," she begged, "take something, my heart."
Rosemary Roselle answered with a slow shudder; she slipped forward,
with her face buried in her arms on the table. Elim regarded her with
profound mingled emotions. In the fantastic past, when he had created
her from the studied essays, he had thought of her--censoriously--as
gay. Perhaps she danced! He wondered momentarily where the men were
Indy had spoken of as present; then he realized that they had been but
a precautionary figment of Indy's imagination; the girl, except for the
woman with the tender brown hand caressing her shoulder, was alone in
the house.
He sat with chin on breast gazing with serious speculation at the
crumpled figure opposite him. Indy, corroborating his surmise, said to
the girl:
"I can't make out at all why your papa don't come back. He said
yesterday when he left he wouldn't be hardly an hour."
"Something dreadful has happened," Rosemary Roselle insisted, raising a
hopeless face. "Indy, do you suppose he's dead like McCall and--and--"
"Mr. Roselle he ain't dead," the woman responded stoutly; "he's just
had to keep low trash from stealing all his tobacco."
"He could easily be found," Elim put in; "I could have an orderly
detailed, word brought you in no time." The girl paid not the slightest
heed to his proposal. From the street came a hoarse drunken shouting, a
small inflamed rabble streamed by.
Pages:
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246