“I’ll count the days,” said Archie, courteously. “Pip-pip!”
Hardly had the door closed behind the composer when it opened again to admit Lucille.
“Hallo, light of my soul!” said Archie, rising and embracing his wife. “Where have you been all the afternoon? I was expecting you this many an hour past. I wanted you to meet–”
“I’ve been having tea with a girl down in Greenwich Village. I couldn’t get away before. Who was that who went out just as I came along the passage?”
“Chappie of the name of Hymack. I met him in France. A composer and what not.”
“We seem to have been moving in artistic circles this afternoon. The girl I went to see is a singer. At least, she wants to sing, but gets no encouragement.”
“Precisely the same with my bird. He wants to get his music sung but nobody’ll sing it. But I didn’t know you knew any Greenwich Village warblers, sunshine of my home. How did you meet this female?”
Lucille sat down and gazed forlornly at him with her big grey eyes. She was registering something, but Archie could not gather what it was.
“Archie, darling, when you married me you undertook to share my sorrows, didn’t you?”
“Absolutely! It’s all in the book of words. For better or for worse, in sickness and in health, all-down-set-’em-up-in-the-other-alley. Regular iron-clad contract!”
“Then share ’em!” said Lucille. “Bill’s in love again!”
Archie blinked.
“Bill? When you say Bill, do you mean Bill? Your brother Bill? My brother-in-law Bill? Jolly old William, the son and heir of the Brewsters?”
“I do.”
“You say he’s in love? Cupid’s dart?”
“Even so!”
“But, I say! Isn’t this rather–What I mean to say is, the lad’s an absolute scourge! The Great Lover, what! Also ran, Brigham Young, and all that sort of thing! Why, it’s only a few weeks ago that he was moaning brokenly about that vermilion-haired female who subsequently hooked on to old Reggie van Tuyl!”
“She’s a little better than that girl, thank goodness. All the same, I don’t think Father will approve.”
“Of what calibre is the latest exhibit?”
“Well, she comes from the Middle West, and seems to be trying to be twice as Bohemian as the rest of the girls down in Greenwich Village. She wears her hair bobbed and goes about in a kimono. She’s probably read magazine stories about Greenwich Village, and has modelled herself on them. It’s so silly, when you can see Hicks Corners sticking out of her all the time.”
“That one got past me before I could grab it. What did you say she had sticking out of her?”
“I meant that anybody could see that she came from somewhere out in the wilds. As a matter of fact, Bill tells me that she was brought up in Snake Bite, Michigan.”
“Snake Bite? What rummy names you have in America! Still, I’ll admit there’s a village in England called Nether Wallop, so who am I to cast the first stone? How is old Bill? Pretty feverish?”
“He says this time it is the real thing.”
“That’s what they all say! I wish I had a dollar for every time– Forgotten what I was going to say!” broke off Archie, prudently. “So you think,” he went on, after a pause, “that William’s latest is going to be one more shock for the old dad?”
“I can’t imagine Father approving of her.”
“I’ve studied your merry old progenitor pretty closely,” said Archie, “and, between you and me, I can’t imagine him approving of anybody!”
“I can’t understand why it is that Bill goes out of his way to pick these horrors. I know at least twenty delightful girls, all pretty and with lots of money, who would be just the thing for him; but he sneaks away and goes falling in love with someone impossible. And the worst of it is that one always feels one’s got to do one’s best to see him through.”
“Absolutely! One doesn’t want to throw a spanner into the works of Love’s young dream. It behoves us to rally round. Have you heard this girl sing?”
“Yes. She sang this afternoon.”
“What sort of a voice has she got?”