Saturdays were the regular dinner nights at the Country Club; Dorothy was the final fluffy attraction that turned Pelham into an invariable attender. He annexed himself to the lively group that ringed her on these occasions, to the amusement of her gayer admirers.
"Here's Dots, poaching on the bassinet preserve!" some professional bachelor, his head innocent alike of hair and illusions, would indict.
"First childhood or second, why should I discriminate?" Her cheerful offensive routed the covetous critics.
Dorothy's young moth was at least persistent. Her attractive bungalow dominated the hilly head of a by-street near the links, and Pelham formed the habit of dropping in for Sunday suppers. She was good to her maids, preparing and serving herself the crisp salad mysteries and froth-crowned desserts.
Her eyes would twinkle adorably. "Mamma's helpful boy! Here, let me put this apron on you!"
He could feel her voluble fingers whisper to him, as they shaped the knot; she would stand close before him, to see that the linen badge of utility hung evenly from his stretched shoulders. This disturbed the regularity of his heart-beats; but then, she was Lyman's wife, reflected Pelham. When the husband was present, he smiled enviously at the timid and satisfied adoration that Pelham's efforts to conceal published the more.
Despite all of his reading, Dorothy's marriage made her, in his brown adolescent eyes, wholly intangible. She could not have been guarded more effectually by the Chinese Wall, or a thicket of fire, with a paralyzed Siegfried moping without. Her liberal hints encountered an adamant obtuseness; he was not linguist enough, in her case, to read correctly frankly provocative pouts, slanted glances, even her gipsying fingers, that brushed his like the kiss of wind-wedded blossoms. These and more became substance of his erotic fancies; but the world of fantasy and of reality, in this case, he knew could never blend.
His amorous stupidity often exasperated her.
One night she yielded a narrow seat for him on the porch-swing, an openly demanded tête-à-tête, although the cushions on the stone steps and the settles within were warm with gossiping friends. "You're always so mournful when you're with me, Pelham."