Standish was flushed and confused. “The Storms came to tell you good-bye, Mrs. Coatesnash. They’re leaving Crockford tomorrow.”
“So I understand,” said the lady.
Jack gave me a wicked grin, and said softly, “We felt we couldn’t go until we had told you how much we had enjoyed our stay.”
She took him with the utmost seriousness—she was never remarkable for humor—and said something vague about the cottage being a pleasant place to live.
Standish, who had pictured quite a different sort of meeting, by now was intensely irritated. “Mrs. Coatesnash,” he said sternly, “have you forgotten my telling you that these young people saved your life? Risked their own to do it?”
“Forgotten!” she echoed, indignantly. “Certainly I had not forgotten. I was just about to say it was most kind of them. Most kind.”
She extended one jeweled hand to me, another hand to Jack and gave us her belated and beneficent blessing. After a visible mental struggle, she even promised to mention us in her will.
“There now, Lola,” Jack said a few minutes later, when we were safely in the hall and walking down the stairs, “you should be a very, very happy girl. Our future is so well provided for we can both quit working. Generous I call it. Most generous!”
We both burst out laughing. Standish emitted a few disgusted snorts, and then reluctantly joined in.
We reached our car. It was only four o’clock, and one of those magical afternoons in early spring when cold and darkness seem impossible. The sun was warm and beat down strongly.
Jack said suddenly, “How would you like to dine in New York tonight, Lola? I would. Let’s do.”
“Tonight?” I was startled. “But, Jack, I haven’t paid the light and phone bills yet; I haven’t…”
“Get in. We’ll mail checks. Let’s go now—this minute—right away.”
“Our bags,” I wailed, “are back in the cottage.”
“We’ll send for them.”
“I’ll send them to you,” offered Standish, catching Jack’s excitement and my own. “Be glad to. I’ll get them off tomorrow.”
I still hesitated, and Jack lifted me bodily into his arms and dropped me into the car. He pressed on the starter; the car shot forward and I had a confused glimpse of Standish’s half smiling, half bewildered face. He waved.
We turned sharply, and I saw him no longer. The road ahead was wide and straight and filled with many other hurrying cars. I hardly noticed them. I was looking for a roadside sign. I found one.
It read: “New York—102 Miles.”
Jack also had seen the sign. Simultaneously we smiled, and when Jack said, “The country is a nice place to visit,” I chanted, “but I wouldn’t live there it you gave it to me!”
Death in the Back Seat Page 27