I'm
a fool about music."
"Perhaps, if you hate to sew--"
"I hate a good many things, my dear, when you play like that. I
hate being over here in this place, and I hate fleas and German
cooking and clinics, and I hate being forty years old and as poor
as a church-mouse and as ugly as sin, and I hate never having had
any children!"
Harmony was very uncomfortable and just a little shocked. But the
next moment Dr. Gates had wiped her eyes with a scrap of the
flannel and was smiling up through her glasses.
"The plain truth really is that I have indigestion. I dare say
I'm really weeping in anticipation over the Sunday dinner! The
food's bad and I can't afford to live anywhere else. I'd take a
room and do my own cooking, but what time have I?" She spread out
the pieces of flannel on her knee. "Does this look like anything
to you?"
"A petticoat, isn't it?"
"I didn't intend it as a petticoat."
"I thought, on account of the scallops--"
"Scallops!" Dr. Gates gazed at the painfully cut pink edges and
from them to Harmony. Then she laughed, peal after peal of joyous
mirth.
"Scallops!" she gasped at last. "Oh, my dear, if you'd seen me
cutting 'em! And with Peter Byrne's scissors!"
Now here at last they were on common ground. Harmony, delicately
flushed, repeated the name, clung to it conversationally, using
little adroitnesses to bring the talk back to him. All roads of
talk led to Peter--Peter's future, Peter's poverty, Peter's
refusing to have his hair cut, Peter's encounter with a major of
the guards, and the duel Peter almost fought.
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