The Little Lady of the Big House / Маленькая хозяйка большого дома. Книга для чтения на английском языке

“And may jackasses dance on your grandmother’s grave —”

“And may jackasses dance on my grandmother’s grave,” she solemnly repeated.

The third morning of Graham’s absence, Dick saw to it[438] that he was occupied with his dairy manager when Paula made her eleven o’clock pilgrimage, peeped in upon him, and called her “Good morning, merry gentleman,” from the door. The Masons, arriving in several machines with their boisterous crowd of young people, saved Paula for lunch and the afternoon; and, on her urging, Dick noted, she made the evening safe by holding them over for bridge and dancing.

But the fourth morning, the day of Graham’s expected return, Dick was alone in his workroom at eleven. Bending over his desk, signing letters, he heard Paula tiptoe into the room. He did not look up, but while he continued writing his signature he listened with all his soul to the faint, silken swish of her kimono. He knew when she was bending over him, and all but held his breath. But when she had softly kissed his hair and called her “Good morning, merry gentleman,” she evaded the hungry sweep of his arm and laughed her way out. What affected him as strongly as the disappointment was the happiness he had seen in her face. She, who so poorly masked her moods, was bright-eyed and eager as a child. And it was on this afternoon that Graham was expected, Dick could not escape making the connection.

He did not care to ascertain if she had replenished the lilacs in the tower room, and, at lunch, which was shared with three farm college students from Davis, he found himself forced to extemporize a busy afternoon for himself when Paula tentatively suggested that she would drive Graham up from Eldorado.

“Drive?” Dick asked.

“Duddy and Fuddy,” she explained. “They’re all on edge[439], and I just feel like exercising them and myself. Of course, if you’ll share the exercise, we’ll drive anywhere you say, and let him come up in the machine.”

Dick strove not to think there was anxiety in her manner while she waited for him to accept or decline her invitation.

“Poor Duddy and Fuddy would be in the happy hunting grounds if they had to cover my ground this afternoon,” he laughed, at the same time mapping his program. “Between now and dinner I’ve got to do a hundred and twenty miles. I’m taking the racer[440], and it’s going to be some dust and bump and only an occasional low place. I haven’t the heart to ask you along. You go on and take it out of Duddy and Fuddy.”

Paula sighed, but so poor an actress was she that in the sigh, intended for him as a customary reluctant yielding of his company, he could not fail to detect the relief at his decision.

“Whither away?” she asked brightly, and again he noticed the color in her face, the happiness, and the brilliance of her eyes.

“Oh, I’m shooting away down the river to the dredging work – Carlson insists I must advise him – and then up in to Sacramento, running over the Teal Slough land on the way, to see Wing Fo Wong.”

“And in heaven’s name who is this Wing Fo Wong?” she laughingly queried, “that you must trot and see him?”

“A very important personage, my dear. Worth all of two millions – made in potatoes and asparagus down in the Delta country. I’m leasing three hundred acres of the Teal Slough land to him.” Dick addressed himself to the farm students. “That land lies just out of Sacramento on the west side of the river. It’s a good example of the land famine that is surely coming. It was tule swamp when I bought it, and I was well laughed at by the old-timers. I even had to buy out a dozen hunting preserves. It averaged me eighteen dollars an acre, and not so many years ago either.

“You know the tule swamps. Worthless, save for ducks and low-water pasturage. It cost over three hundred an acre to dredge and drain and to pay my quota of the river reclamation work. And on what basis of value do you think I am making a ten years’ lease to old Wing Fo Wong? TWO thousand an acre. I couldn’t net more than that if I truck-farmed it myself. Those Chinese are wizards with vegetables, and gluttons for work. No eight hours for them. It’s eighteen hours. The last coolie is a partner with a microscopic share. That’s the way Wing Fo Wong gets around the eight hour law.”

* * *

Twice warned and once arrested[441], was Dick through the long afternoon. He drove alone, and though he drove with speed he drove with safety. Accidents, for which he personally might be responsible, were things he did not tolerate. And they never occurred. That same sureness and definiteness of adjustment with which, without fumbling or approximating, he picked up a pencil or reached for a door-knob, was his in the more complicated adjustments, with which, as instance, he drove a high-powered machine at high speed over busy country roads.