The Lady of Situations Read Online Free PDF Page B

enough partners not too much to disappoint the scorekeeper. The senior prefect had passed the word that his cousin was to be looked after.
    ***
    But the next day, before her departure with Mrs. DeVoe, she had a ritual which she had promised herself during her largely sleepless night to perform. She had slipped a cigarette out of Mrs. DeVoe's purse in the Parents' House, and after lunch, holding it between her fingers, she asked Grant to show her where the headmaster's study was. He glanced in horror at the cigarette and demanded what the hell she thought she was going to do.
    "I'm not asking you to take me there. I'm asking you where it is."
    He refused point-blank to have anything to do with her insane project, so she left him, and having been informed by a small boy on the campus that the headmaster's study was in the vast red-brick cube of a residence that formed the end of the largest school building, she made her way there. She was ushered by a maid into a dark room in the center of which Dr. Lockwood was reading a book at a table desk under a green lamp. Of course, she had seen him when he greeted the Halloween guests, but she had not been close, and now she made out the curious red stare in the rocky square face that looked up to the doorway. He was about to rise from his desk when she said:
    "Is it all right, sir, if I smoke in here?"
    He sat back at once in his chair, waving her to a seat opposite him. Without uttering a word he resumed his reading.
    Natica, puffing at her weed, gazing at the long tiers and rows of framed photographs on the walls—of teams and crews, of stalwart athletes expressionlessly holding oars or bats or footballs, of suited figures in chairs clasping copies of the school paper or magazine, of classes arrayed on steps after commencement, of gathered faculty, all male—felt like Kipling's jungle boy who had come, hidden, to see the mystery of the elephants' dance. When she crept away silently at last and cast a furtive glance back at her companion, it was to note that he remained as motionless as a Buddha.

3
    N ATICA HAD SO prepared herself for the letdown that would inevitably follow her Halloween weekend that she found it not too hard to cope with. Besides, she was busy preparing for college entrance examinations in the spring, for Aunt Ruth had arranged for a partial scholarship at Barnard if she got in, and she was to live the following winter in her aunt's apartment. So liberation, at least from home and Smithport, was in sight. Edith DeVoe was at school in the city, and Grant, after one perfunctory letter, had ceased to write, so she had no further relations with the family at Amberley, even on weekends, when they presumably were there. No doubt it was just as well. She had evidently served her purpose in giving Grant an access to the senior prefect's crowd, and the cigarette episode with the headmaster had no doubt scared him away for good.
    There was, however, to be one more meeting with him. Kitty Chauncey, seemingly assured of pleasing her daughter, announced one evening in the Christmas vacation:
    "I saw your friend, Grant DeVoe, in the drugstore this morning. The family are here for the holidays. I asked him for Sunday lunch."
    "And he's coming?" Natica asked with unconcealed dismay.
    "Of course he's coming. Why shouldn't he come? Do you think he's too grand to sit at our humble board? I thought I had to do something about him, seeing that he asked you up to his school and his mother paid for your trip and a new evening dress. Really, Natica, one never knows how to please you."
    Natica could picture the little scene at the drugstore. She knew how persistent her mother could be and what a poor actor Grant was. He would have stammered out a lame excuse which she would have promptly punctured, and he would have been left with no alternative but to accept.
    It was all quite as awkward as she had anticipated. Grant arrived so late that they repaired at once to the dining room.