Between Friends

After all, girls, like birds, were eternally eating. Except for that, and incessant preening, existence meant nothing more important to either species.

He had been busy for a few moments with the group when she said something to him, and he looked around from his abstraction. She was holding out toward him a chicken sandwich.

When his mind came back from wool gathering, he curtly declined the offer, and, as an afterthought, bestowed upon her a wholly mechanical smile, in recognition of a generosity not welcome.

“Why don’t you ever eat luncheon?” she asked.

“Why should I?” he replied, preoccupied.

“It’s bad for you not to. Besides, you are growing thin.”

“Is that your final conclusion concerning me, Cecile?” he asked, absently.

“Won’t you please take this sandwich?”

Her outstretched arm more than what she said arrested his drifting attention again.

“Why the devil do you want me to eat?” he inquired, fishing out his empty pipe and filling it.

“You smoke too much. It’s bad for you. It will do very queer things to the lining of your stomach if you smoke your luncheon instead of eating it.”

He yawned.

“Is that so?” he said.

“Certainly it’s so. Please take this sandwich.”

He stood looking at the outstretched arm, thinking of other things and the girl sprang to her feet, caught his hand, opened the fingers, placed the sandwich on the palm, then, with a short laugh as though slightly disconcerted by her own audacity, she snatched the pipe from his left hand and tossed it upon the table. When she had reseated herself on the lounge beside her pasteboard box of luncheon, she became even more uncertain concerning the result of what she had done, and began to view with rising alarm the steady gray eyes that were so silently inspecting her.

But after a moment Drene walked over to the sofa, seated himself, curiously scrutinized the sandwich which lay across the palm of his hand, then gravely tasted it.

“This will doubtless give me indigestion,” he remarked. “Why, Cecile, do you squander your wages on nourishment for me?”

“It cost only five cents.”

“But why present five cents to me?” “I gave ten to a beggar this morning.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Was he grateful?”

“He seemed to be.”

“This sandwich is excellent; but if I feel the worse for it, I’ll not be very grateful to you.” But he continued eating.

“‘The woman tempted me,’” she quoted, glancing at him sideways.

After a moment’s survey of her:

“You’re one of those bright, saucy, pretty, inexplicable things that throng this town and occasionally flit through this profession—aren’t you?”

“Am I?”

“Yes. Nobody looks for anything except mediocrity; you’re one of the surprises. Nobody expects you; nobody can account for you, but you appear now and then, here and there, anywhere, even everywhere—a pretty sparkle against the gray monotony of life, a momentary flash like a golden moat afloat in sunshine—and what then?”

She laughed.

“What then? What becomes of you? Where do you go? What do you turn into?”

“I don’t know.”

“You go somewhere, don’t you? You change into something, don’t you? What happens to you, petite Cigale?”

“When?”

“When the sunshine is turned off and the snow comes.”

“I don’t know, Mr. Drene.” She broke her chocolate cake into halves and laid one on his knee.

“Thanks for further temptation,” he said grimly.

“You are welcome. It’s good, isn’t it?”

“Excellent. Adam liked the apple, too. But it raised hell with him.”

She laughed, shot a direct glance at him, and began to nibble her cake, with her eyes still fixed on him.

Once or twice he encountered her gaze but his own always wandered absently elsewhere.

“You think a great deal, don’t you?” she remarked.

“Don’t you?”

“I try not to—too much.”

“What?” he asked, swallowing the last morsel of cake.

She shrugged her shoulders:

“What’s the advantage of thinking?”

He considered her reply for a moment, her blue and rather childish eyes, and the very pure oval of her face. Then his attention flagged as usual—was wandering—when she sighed, very lightly, so that he scarcely heard it—merely noticed it sufficiently to conclude that, as usual, there was the inevitable hard luck story afloat in her vicinity, and that he lacked the interest to listen to it.

“Thinking,” she said, “is a luxury to a tranquil mind and a punishment to a troubled one. So I try not to.”

It was a moment or two before it occurred to him that the girl had uttered an unconscious epigram.