The Little Lady of the Big House - Page 120/160

"And he's got his serious scars, as well," Dick nodded concurrence.

"Yes--right in the corners of the eyes, just after he has smiled, you'll see them come. They're not tired marks exactly, but rather the old eternal questions: Why? What for? What's it worth? What's it all about?"

* * * * *

And bringing up the rear of the cavalcade, Ernestine and Graham talked.

"Dick's deep," she was saying. "You don't know him any too well. He's dreadfully deep. I know him a little. Paula knows him a lot. But very few others ever get under the surface of him. He's a real philosopher, and he has the control of a stoic or an Englishman, and he can play- act to fool the world."

* * * * *

At the long hitching rails under the oaks, where the dismounting party gathered, Paula was in gales of laughter.

"Go on, go on," she urged Dick, "more, more."

"She's been accusing me of exhausting my vocabulary in naming the house-boys by my system," he explained.

"And he's given me at least forty more names in a minute and a half.-- Go on, Dick, more."

"Then," he said, striking a chant, "we can have Oh Sin and Oh Pshaw, Oh Sing and Oh Song, Oh Sung and Oh Sang, Oh Last and Oh Least, Oh Ping and Oh Pong, Oh Some, Oh More, and Oh Most, Oh Naught and Oh Nit..."

And Dick jingled away into the house still chanting his extemporized directory.