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“Let’s go somewhere and have supper—away from everything. You come, and
it’ll be my party.”
So they drove for an hour or so, and climbed by a winding road to the
top of a hill, and there was a café, with a terrace looking out over a
bay and a rocky shore-line that would have been famous if it had been in
Italy. They ate supper, and chatted about school affairs, and Eunice
told him about her home-life and how some one had written her mother a
letter revealing that her father had paid a lot of money to some woman,
and Mrs. Hoyt was furious, because why should men do things that made it
necessary for them to pay money?
The sun set over the ocean, and the lights came out along the shore, and
a big full moon behind the hills; and Eunice said, “Do you like me a
little bit, Bunny?” He answered that of course he did, and she said,
“But you don’t show it ever.” “Well,” he explained, “I never know quite
what to make of you, because you always kid me;” and to that she said,
“I know, Bunny, I’m a horrid mean thing, but the truth is, I just do
that to keep my courage up. I’m afraid of you, too, because you’re
serious, and I’m just a silly chatterbox, and I have to make a show.” So
after that Bunny was able to enjoy the party.
They got into the car and drove again. The road ran through a tangle of
sand-dunes, high up above the ocean. “Oh, this is lovely!” said Eunice,
and when they came to a place where the ground was firm she ran the car
off the pavement and parked it. “Let’s go and watch the ocean,” she
said. “There’s a rug in the back.” So Bunny got the rug out, and they
walked over the dunes, and sat on top of one, and listened to the waves
below; and Eunice smoked a cigarette, and scolded Bunny because he was a
horrid little Puritan that wouldn’t keep her company. Presently a man
came walking by, and glanced at them as he passed, and Eunice said,
“Have you got a gun?” And when he said that he hadn’t, she remarked,
“You’re supposed to bring a gun nowadays when you go on a petting
party.” Bunny had not realized that this was exactly a petting party,
but you can see that it would not have been polite of him to say so.
He listened while she told him about bandits who were making a business
of holding up couples parked by the roadside; some were beastly to the
girls, and what would Bunny do if one of them were suddenly to appear?
Bunny said he didn’t know, but of course he’d defend a woman the best he
could. “But I don’t want you to get shot,” said Eunice. “We’ve a scandal
already in our family.” So she said, “Let’s get lost, Bunny;” and he
gathered up the rug and they wandered over the dunes—a long way from
the road and from everything; and in one of the hollows, a still nest
where the sand was soft and smooth, she told him to spread the rug
again, and there they sat, hid from everything save the round yellow
moon, which has looked down upon millions and millions of such scenes,
and never yet betrayed a confidence.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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