It was but the work of an instant to get to her handbag and hide the
paper within it. She had no qualm of conscience. She had only a queer
little jumble of hope and confidence.
“The needle’s off,” sang Elsie in the distance, and so it was, rasping
its way toward the pin at the centre. Edith pushed the little lever,
lifted the arm, inserted a new needle, tossed the record to the couch,
and restored the Servian piece. She lifted her head and marched down the
hall to the kitchen.
“That’s the stuff, Edith. Why, your cheeks are red as fire, and your eyes
are snapping like electricity.”
“I could dance,” said Edith. “I’ll put on The Blue Danube, and we’ll take
a turn in the kitchen.”
“You won’t find anything about the Danube in _my_ records, thank you.
Saadi hates the Austrians, and my family doesn’t love them any too well.
Father was born in Galicia.”
“I was only joking, dear. Dr. Rowland wouldn’t let you dance. How good
everything looks. Let’s eat in the kitchen.”
“Not much! You’ve got to see all the pretty things I have.”
“And not one from me among them!”
“How do you know? Saadi and I had no end of fun buying our own wedding
presents. I bought for all my friends, and he did the same. I have
presents from Mr. Wu, and Mr. Becker, and Mr. Chatterjee, and Mr. Deland,
and Mr. Ameen, and Dr. Trench.”
“Indeed? Dr. Trench is the man who attended Bobbie.”
“Well, now, Edith, what do you know about that! Isn’t that the funniest
coincidence? He is the man whom Saadi refused to promise.”
“Have you met him, Elsie?”
“Goodness, no. Don’t you understand that nobody knows but you and my
folks?”
Edith went back to stop the whirling record, and presently returned.
“What did Dr. Trench give you—by proxy?”
“The loveliest set of blue china, just like his own. And that
pigeon’s-blood vase that I showed you was from Mr. Wu, and the samovar
is from Mr. Becker, and the ivory paper-cutter like lacework is from Mr.
Chatterjee. Mr. Ameen is a Persian, and he gave me the silk spread for
my table in the sitting-room—only he doesn’t know it. This”—Elsie waved
aloft an aluminum frying-pan—“is from Mr. Deland. Saadi says I must call
it a spider, ‘because that is what Yankee boy calls it.’”
“And did I really give you something?”
“Yes, Edith, a book. Saadi and I read the last part of it together. I
told you I wouldn’t take a dare, and I didn’t. We laughed ourselves sick
over some of the things, but Saadi took a great fancy to that third of
John. I told him that a friend of mine called it the boldest thing ever
written, and he said he’d be damned if it wasn’t. Up to that time Saadi’s
favourite author was Haeckel, but he said that Haeckel was insaner than
Jesus. It seems that Haeckel wants the southern Slavs wiped out to make
room for German culture.”
Edith listened with amazement, but without losing her sense of impending
disaster. “Where is that book, dearie?”
“In my bedroom. Saadi used to read it there.”
Edith went into the bedroom and found a thin Oxford bible. Her own card
was in it, and she now remembered giving her card to Elsie that first day
at the factory. Deeply touched, she turned the pages and found a certain
place.
Then she went back to the kitchen. “I should never have given you that;
you know that I wouldn’t; but I’ve marked a place in it—one that your
people love as much as mine do. It just says, ‘As thy days, so shall thy
strength be.’”