The Innocent Adventuress Part 6

Upon a huge, black fur rug before the fire two young men were waiting.

Demurely Maria thought of the letter she would write home that night--one young man the first evening in New York, two young men the first luncheon at the Lodge. Decidedly, America brimmed with young men!

Meanwhile, Ruth was presenting them. The big dark youth, heavy and lazy moving, was the Signor Bob Martin.

The other, Johnny Byrd, was shorter and broad of shoulder; he had reddish blonde hair slightly parted and brushed straight back; he had a short nose with freckles and blue eyes with light lashes. When he laughed--and he seemed always laughing--he showed splendid teeth.

Both young men stared--but staring was a man's prerogative in Italy and Maria Angelina was unperturbed. At table she sat serenely, her dark lashes shading the oval of her cheeks, while the young men's eyes--and one pair of them, especially--took in the black, braid-bound head and the small, Madonna-like face, faintly flushed by sun and wind, above the golden glow of the sheer frock.

Then Johnny Byrd leaned across the table towards her.

"I say, Signorina," he began abruptly, "what's the Italian for peach?"

and as Maria Angelina looked up and started very innocently to explain, he leaned back and burst into a shout of amus.e.m.e.nt in which the others more moderately joined.

"Don't let him get you," was Ruth's unintelligible advice, and Bobby Martin turned to his friend to admonish, "Now, Johnny, don't start anything. . . . Johnny's such a good little starter!"

"And a poor finisher," added Ruth smartly and both young men laughed again as at a very good joke.

"A starter--but not a beginner, eh?" chuckled Cousin Jim, and Mrs. Blair smiled at both young men even as she protested, "This is the noisiest table in the room!"

It _was_ a noisy table. Maria Angelina was astounded at the hilarity of that meal. Already she began censoring her report to Mamma. Certainly Mamma would never understand Ruth's elbows on the table, her shouts of laughter--or the pellets of bread she flipped.

And the words they used! Maria could only feel that the language of Mamma must be singularly antiquated. So much she did not understand . . . had never heard. . . . What, indeed, was a simp, a b.o.o.b, a nut?

What a poor fish? . . . She held her peace, and listened, confused by the astounding vocabulary and the even more astounding intimacy. What things they said to each other in jest!

And whatever Maria Angelina said they took in jest. She evoked an appreciative peal when she ventured that the Lodge must be very old because she had read that the first settlers made their homes of logs.

"I'll take you up and show you _our_ ancestral hut," declared Bob Martin. "Where Granddad used to stretch the Red Skins to dry by the back door--before tanning 'em for raincoats."

"Really?" said Maria Angelina ingenuously, then at sight of his expression, "But how shall I know what you tell me is true or not?" she appealed. "It all sounds so strange to me--the truth as well."

"You look at _me_," said Johnny Byrd leaning forward. "When I shut this eye, so, you shake your head at them. When I nod--you can believe."

"But you will not always be there----"

"I'll say you're wrong," he retorted. "I'm going to be there so usually, like the weather--did you say you wanted me to stay a month, Bob?"

Color stole into the young girl's cheeks even while she laughed with them. She was conscious of a faint and confused half-distress beneath her mounting confidence. They were so _very_ jocular. . . .

Of course this was but chaff, she understood, and she began to wonder if that other, that young Signor Elder, had been but joking. It might be the American way. . . . And yet this was all flattering chaff and so perhaps she could trust the flattery of her secret hope.

Surely, surely, it was all going to happen. He would come--she would see him again.

Meanwhile she shook her young braids at Johnny Byrd.

"But you are so sudden! I think he is a flirter, yes?" she said gayly to Mr. Blair who smiled back appreciatively and a trifle protectively at her.

But Bobby Martin drawled, "Oh, no, he's not. He's too careful," and more laughter ensued.

After luncheon they went back into the hall where the three men drifted out into a side room where cigars and cigarettes were sold, and began filling their cases, while Mrs. Blair stepped out on the verandas and joined a group there. Ruth remained by the fireplace, and Maria Angelina waited by her.

"Your friends are very nice," she began with a certain diffidence, as her cousin had nothing to say. "That Johnny Byrd--he is very funny----"

"Oh, Johnny's funny," said Ruth in an odd voice. She added, "Regular spoiled baby--had everything his way. Only an old guardian to boss him."

"You mean he is an orphan?"

"Completely."

Maria Angelina did not smile. "But that is very sad," she said soberly.

"No home life----"

"Don't get it into your head that Johnny Byrd wants any _home life_,"

said her cousin dryly, and with a hint of hard warning in her negligent voice. "He's been dodging home life ever since he wore long trousers."

"He must then," Maria Angelina deduced, very simply, "be rich."

"He's one of the Long Island Byrds."

It sounded to Maria like a flock of ducks, but she perceived that it was given for affirmation. She followed Ruth's glance to where the backs of the young men's heads were visible, bending over some coins they were apparently matching. . . . Johnny Byrd's head was flaming in the suns.h.i.+ne. . . .

"He's a bird from a hard-boiled egg," Ruth said with a smile of inner amus.e.m.e.nt.

But whatever cryptic signal she flashed slipped unseen from Maria Angelina's vision. Johnny Byrd was nice, but it was a gay, cheery, everyday sort of niceness, she thought, with none of the quicksilver charm of the young man at the dinner dance. . . . And she was unimpressed by Johnny's money. She took the millionaires in America as for granted as fish in the sea.

She merely felt cheerfully that Fate was galloping along the expected course.

Subconsciously, perhaps, she recorded a possible second string to her bow.

With tact, she thought, she turned the talk to Ruth's young man.

"And the Signor Bob Martin--I suppose he, too, is a millionaire," she smiled, and was astonished at Ruth's derisive laugh.

"Not unless he murders his father," said that barbaric young woman.

She added, relenting towards her cousin's ignorance, "Oh, Bob hasn't anything of his own, you know. . . . But his father's taking him into business this fall."

Maria Angelina was bewildered. Distinctly she had understood, from the Leila Grey conversation, that Bobby Martin was a very eligible young man and yet here was her cousin flouting any financial congratulation.

Hesitantly, "Is his father--in a good business?" she offered, and won from Ruth more merriment as inexplicable as her speech.

"He's in Steel," she murmured, which was no enlightenment to Maria.

She ventured to more familiar ground.

"He is very handsome."

To her astonishment Ruth snorted. . . . Now Lucia always bridled consciously when one praised Paolo Tosti.