“And you came to entertain.” Her glance travelled unconsciously to his clothing.
“I’m glad if I add to the gaiety of nations,” he offered whimsically, “but my other clothing got soaked in the downpour coming here and these city decorations were the only things I had by that were dry. Catering to a whim over the success of certain ventures, I put them on as a sort of celebration. Then I saw your light over here and heard you playing, and I thought I’d step over and see if everything was all right.”
“All dressed up and you simply had to have some place to go,” flashed Josephine Stone, but in a better nature that he made contagious.
“Likely that was it. Even in the bush people are vain once in awhile.”
“But since you came to entertain and not to explain, Mr. Smith, wouldn’t it have been really thoughtful to have brought along your Indian friend, Ogima Bush?”
“That might have proved quite difficult. Did you find Ogima entertaining?”
“In a Satanic way, yes. He has at least one virtue.”
“Consistency. He has no fickle moods; he is always just what he is—a savage.”
That subtle thrust, she saw, went under the skin. “That’s because you don’t know Ogima,” he observed gravely. “He is faithful to his friends and he has the rare quality of being sincere. Yes, and he is consistent. With the exception of those artificial red gashes under his eyes, Ogima is one hundred per cent. what he appears to be.
“But come,” he urged with an apparent desire to change the subject, “aren’t you going to play for me?”
She shook her head. A spirit of contrariness prompted her to tantalise him, to make this audacious, dandified czar of the big timber feel ill at ease.
“I had taken it for granted _I_ was to be entertained,” she insisted, smiling in spite of herself at the conceit of the tiny, scintillating white diamond in his tie.
But even in his present playful mood Acey Smith had his nimble wits with him. “To-morrow is your birthday,” he observed irrelevantly, his flashing black orbs resting on hers momentarily. “You will be twenty-one and have reached a woman’s estate.”
It was she who was caught perplexed. “How—how did you know that?” she cried.
“The proverbial little bird must have been tattling to me. At any rate, it just now struck me that this being the eve of so important an anniversary your slightest whim should be gratified.”