They don’t appreciate it.”
“Well, I’m not going to any longer.
That’s one thing sure!
No, indeed!
I want a home and some children.
I’m going to have them!” she said defiantly.
In a moment, she added tenderly: “Poor old papa!
I wonder what he’s going to say?”
He said very little.
The Gants, after initial surprise, moulded new events very quickly into the texture of their lives.
Abysmal change widened their souls out in a brooding unconsciousness.
Mr. Hugh Barton came up into the hills to visit his affianced kin.
He came, to their huge delight, lounging in the long racing chassis of a dusty brown 1911 Buick roadster.
He came, in a gaseous coil, to the roaring explosion of great engines.
He descended, a tall, elegant figure, dyspeptic, lean almost to emaciation, very foppishly laundered and tailored.
He looked the car over slowly, critically, a long cigar clamped in the corner of his saturnine mouth, drawing his gauntlets off deliberately.
Then, in the same unhurried fashion, he removed from his head the ten-gallon gray sombrero — the only astonishing feature of his otherwise undebatable costume — and shook each long thin leg delicately for a moment to straighten out the wrinkles.
But there were none.
Then, deliberately, he came up the walk to Dixieland, where the Gants were assembled.
As he came, unhurried, he took the cigar from his mouth calmly and held it in the fingers of his lean, hairy, violently palsied hand.
His thin black hair, fine spun, was fanned lightly from its elegance by a wantoning breeze.
He espied his betrothed and grinned, with dignity, sardonically, with big nuggets of gold teeth.
They greeted and kissed.
“This is my mother, Hugh,” said Helen.
Hugh Barton bent slowly, courteously, from his thin waist.
He fastened on Eliza a keen penetrating stare that discomposed her.
His lips twisted again in an impressive sardonic smile.
Every one felt he was going to say something very, very important.
“How do you do?” he asked, and took her hand.
Every one then felt that Hugh Barton had said something very, very important.
With equal slow gravity he greeted each one.
They were somewhat awed by his lordliness.
Luke, however, burst out uncontrollably:
“You’re g-g-getting a fine girl, Mr. B-b-barton.”
Hugh Barton turned on him slowly and fixed him with his keen stare.
“I think so,” he said gravely.
His voice was deep, deliberate, with an impressive rasp.
He was selling himself.
In an awkward silence he turned, grinning amiably, on Eugene.
“Have a cigar?” he asked, taking three long powerful weeds from his upper vest pocket, and holding them out in his clean twitching fingers.
“Thanks,” said Eugene with a dissipated leer,
“I’ll smoke a Camel.”
He took a package of cigarettes from his pocket.
Gravely, Hugh Barton held a match for him.
“Why do you wear the big hat?” asked Eugene.
“Psychology,” he said.
“It makes ’em talk.”
“I tell you what!” said Eliza, beginning to laugh.
“That’s pretty smart, isn’t it?”
“Sure!” said Luke.