Runaway

about that,” I said, and blushed like an idiot.
    So he has got it into his head (Father has) that it would be nice if Ollie would take over what I am doing and he really hopes (Father) that Ollie could work himself into the business and eventually be able to take it all over. Maybe he wished I would marry somebody who could do that—though he thinks Wilf is
just dandy.
And Ollie being at loose ends and smart and educated (I don’t know exactly where or how much education but obviously knowing more than practically anybody around here), he might seem like an A-one choice. And for this reason I had to take him to the office yesterday and show him the books etc., and Father took him and introduced him to the men and anybody who happened to be around and it looked as if all went well. Ollie was very attentive and put on a serious business air in the office and then he was cheerful and jokey (but not too jokey) with the men, he even changed his way of talking just the right amount, and Father was so pleased and buoyed up. When I said good night to him he said, “I take it as a real stroke of luck that young fellow showing up here. He’s a fellow who is looking for a future and a place to make himself at home.”
    And I didn’t contradict but I believe that there is as much chance of Ollie settling down here and running a chopping-mill as there is of me getting into the Ziegfeld Follies.
    He just can’t help putting on a nice act.
    I was thinking at one time that Ginny would take him off my hands. She is well-read and smokes and though she goes to church her opinions are the kind some people might take for atheistic. And she told me she didn’t think Ollie was bad-looking though he is on the short side (I would say five-eight or nine). He has the blue eyes she likes and the butterscotchcoloured hair with a wave drooping over his forehead, which seems so intentionally charming. He was very nice to her of course when they met and led her on to talk a lot, and after she had gone home he said, “Your little friend is quite the intellectual, isn’t she?”
    “Little.” Ginny is at least as tall as he is and I certainly felt like telling him that. But it is pretty mean to point out something concerning height to a man who is a bit lacking in that respect so I kept my mouth shut. I didn’t know what to say about the “intellectual” part of it. In my opinion Ginny is an intellectual (for instance has Ollie read
War and Peace
?), but I couldn’t tell from his tone whether he meant she was or she wasn’t. All I could tell was that if she was, it wasn’t something he cared for, and if she wasn’t, then she was acting as if she was and he did not care for that either. I should have said something cool and disagreeable, such as, “You’re too deep for me,” but of course did not think of anything till later. And the worst thing was that as soon as he had said that, I had secretly, in my heart, got an inkling of something about Ginny, and while I was defending her (in my thoughts) I was also in some sly way agreeing with him. I don’t know if she will ever seem as smart to me in the future.
    Wilf was right there and must have heard the whole exchange but said nothing. I could have asked him if he didn’t feel like sticking up for the girl he had once proposed to, but I have never fully let on to him what I know about that. He often just listens to Ollie and me talk, with his head bent forward (the way he has to do with most people, he is so tall) and a little smile on his face. I’m not even sure it’s a smile or just the way his mouth is. In the evenings they both come over and it often ends up with Father and Wilf playing cribbage and Ollie and me just fooling around talking. Or Wilf and Ollie and me playing three-handed Bridge. (Father has never taken to Bridge because he somehow thinks it’s too High-Hat.) Sometimes Wilf gets a call from the Hospital or Elsie Bainton (his housekeeper whose name I can’t remember—I just had to yell and ask Mrs. Box) and he has to go out. Or sometimes when the crib game is finished he goes and sits at the piano and plays by ear. In the dark, maybe. Father wanders out onto the verandah and sits with Ollie and me and we all rock and listen. It seems then that Wilf is just playing the piano for himself and he isn’t doing a performance for us. It doesn’t bother him if we listen or not or if we start to chat. And sometimes we do that, because it can get to be a bit too