Her answer
was, "He's well enough to raise a handsome row if he saw you and me
together."
He grumbled a full double-barreled oath and did not apologize for it.
She spoke coldly:
"You'd better go back to your seat."
She was as severe as a woman can well be with a man who adores her
and writhes with jealousy of a man she adores.
"I'll be good, Teacher," he said. "Was he over there with you?"
She evidently liked to talk about her husband. She brightened as
she spoke. "Yes, for a while. He drove a motor-ambulance, you know,
but it bored him after a month or two. They wouldn't let him up to
the firing-lines, so he quit. Have you seen him?"
"Once or twice."
"He's looking well, isn't he?"
"Yes, confound him! His handsome features have been my ruin."
She could smile at that inverted compliment. But Dyckman began
to think very hard. He was suddenly confronted with one of
the conundrums in duty which life incessantly propounds--life that
squats at all the crossroads with a sphinxic riddle for every
wayfarer.
CHAPTER III
Kedzie--to say it again--did not know enough about New York or
the world to recognize Mrs. Cheever and Mr. Dyckman when she glanced
at them and glanced away. They did not at all come up to Kedzie's
idea or ideal of what swells should be, and she had not even grown
up enough to study the society news that makes such thrilling reading
to those who thrill to that sort of thing. The society notes in
the town paper in Kedzie's town (Nimrim, Missouri) consisted of
bombastic chronicles of church sociables or lists of those present
at surprise-parties.
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