Conversation -- Fiction; Entertaining -- Fiction; Hospitality -- Fiction; New England -- Fiction
The commotion was Ann Woltor. Coated and hatted and already
half-gloved she loomed blackly from the shadows, trying very hard
to attract my attention.
In my twinge of anxiety about the May Girl I had quite forgotten
Ann Woltor. And in the somewhat heated discussion of Allan John's
responsibilities and irresponsibilities, the May Girl also, it
would seem, had passed entirely from my mind.
"I'm very sorry," explained Ann Woltor, "but with this unfortunate
accident to my tooth I shall have to hurry, of course, right back
to town." Even if you had never heard Ann Woltor speak you could
have presaged perfectly from her face just what her voice would be
like, gravely contralto, curiously sonorous, absolutely without
either accent or emphasis, yet carrying in some strange,
inex-plainable way a rather goose-fleshy sense of stubbornness and
finality. "One can't exactly in a Christian land," droned Ann Woltor,
"go round looking like the sole survivor of a massacre."
Across the somewhat sapient mutual consciousness that ever since we
had first laid eyes on each other five months ago--and goodness
knows how long before that--she had been going round perfectly
serenely 'looking like the sole survivor of a massacre,' Ann Woltor
and I stared just a bit deeply into each other's eyes. The
expression in Ann's eyes was an expression of peculiar poignancy.
"No, of course not!" I conceded with some abruptness. "But surely
if you can find the right dentist and he's clever at all, you ought
to be able to get back here on the six-thirty train to-night!"
"The six-thirty train? Perhaps," murmured Ann Woltor. Once again
her eyes hung upon mine. And I knew and Ann Woltor knew and Ann
Woltor knew that I knew,--that she hadn't the slightest intention
in the world of returning to us on any train whatsoever. But for
some reason known only to herself and perhaps one other, was only
too glad to escape from our party--anatomically impossible as that
escape sounds--through the loop-hole of a broken tooth. Already
both black gloves were fastened, and her black traveling-bag swayed
lightly in one slim, determinate hand. "Your maid has ordered the
station bus for me," she confided; "and tells me that by changing
cars at the Junction and again at Lees--Truly I'm sorry to make any
trouble," she interrupted herself. "If there had been any possible
way of just slipping out without anybody noticing----!"
"Without anybody noticing?" I cried. "Why, Ann, you dear silly!"
At this, my first use of her Christian name, she flashed back at me
a single veiled glance of astonishment, and started for the door.
But before I could reach her side my Husband stepped forward and
blocked her exit by the seemingly casual accident of plunging both
arms rather wildly into the sleeves of his great city-going
raincoat.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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