LITMIR.BIZ

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a gaucherie of astonishing proportions that Hamilton Vair had put out his. It looked enormous there, and very empty. I don’t know what particularly made it look that way, but it did, and as if suddenly aware of how it looked, he dropped it abruptly. The grin broadened on his face then, lighted with a sudden malice it hadn’t had before, and he started to speak.

      “Your daughter——”

      But whatever Ham Vair was going to say about Molly Brent is lost to the history of these crowded times. People wouldn’t put out a hand to touch him, but the gods would, and did. At just that moment, a bird flew over. It was a big bird, not the great auk but no sparrow. A sudden howl of mirth, loud, long and completely spontaneous, broke the silence, and the Hot Rod of the Marsh Marigold State instead of joining it made another and far more incredible blunder. A poor misguided waiter, about five feet high and with occupational bunions on both feet, hobbled up to him with an open napkin, and Hamilton Vair knocked his hand down with a furious gesture that sent his tray of Tom Collins winding left and right, all over the astonished little man and half a dozen guests male and female within winding distance. The waiter stumbled and nearly fell. A large “Boo!” rose from somewhere in the crowd, a clear voice called out “For shame!” and boos and laughter mingled until Hamilton Vair jerked abruptly around and left the place.

      The laughter swelled as the little waiter mopped himself off, wet and grinning, a hero for the moment. The Brents had been magnificent. Her face hadn’t changed, her husband’s belly was the absorber that prevented any emotion from more than rippling across his wide mouth and glinting momentarily bright in his eyes.

      V

      I don’t suppose this is what the poet meant by one touch of nature, but it made a whole part of the Washington world spontaneously and delightedly kin. With the exception of Mrs. Brent, I must have been the only person there who wished it hadn’t happened, and not because of the white silk suit Ham Vair could never wear again no matter what the cleaners were able to do. It was his face as he checked his exit, half-way to the garden gate, and looked back. There was blue murder in it. If he’d hated Rufus Brent before, the laughter that echoed in his ears as he left that place must have been utterly intolerable to him.

      For a moment at least, the Brents were in. Mr. Brent was the center of a more than enthusiastic crowd, mostly senators. Nor was Mrs. Brent alone on the sidelines. Her suntanned young friend in the grey flannel suit and steel-rimmed spectacles had got to her at last. That was a break too—it’s surprising how high and dry the middle-aged wife of the man of the moment can be stranded at times. Mrs. Brent was as transformed as everybody else, smiling happily, eager as a girl, and nobody that I heard was making any cracks about her preferring very young and very handsome men. It would have been the moment, because she was genuinely radiant, talking to him.

      “Who is that?”

      I looked around. Marjorie Seaton had moved in beside me. She was cool and lovely, bareheaded in a brown linen dress the shade of her own country tan. “Talking to Mrs. Brent,” she added.

      “His name is Forbes Allerdyce,” I said. “He’s a friend of theirs.”

      “Really? I didn’t know they had any friends here.”

      “He called Vair a lily of the field,” I said. “He can’t be an enemy.”

      She laughed. “Okay. Are you going home after this?”

      She’d stopped laughing abruptly and her brown eyes kindled. “I’ve got something I want you to see.”

      There wasn’t much doubt what it was. “Okay,” I said. I looked at my watch. Whatever my duties to Sergeant Buck’s high-class little lady would be, I ought at least to be home at some point during her early arrival. It took me about fifteen minutes, however to work my way back to Mrs. Brent. Her young friend had gone, but the trailing clouds were still there. Her eyes were shining and her cheeks flushed. She’d pulled her hat into place and for a moment she looked as young and lovely as it did.

      “Oh, Mrs. Latham, I want you to meet Forbes Allerdyce. He’s a friend of my son’s. A friend of Rufie’s. I’m so happy. You must meet him.”

      She looked around eagerly. I saw him then, but two or three of the girls Archie Seaton had avoided by not coming had managed to surround him on his progress to the gate. And he had some of Archie’s finesse, I thought, because he was gone when I looked next. And I think I must unconsciously have seen there was some kind of discrepancy between Forbes Allerdyce’s saying Mrs. Brent had arranged for him to come and the quality of her delight at seeing him. If you arrange for someone to come to a party, you’re not as starry-eyed as all that when they arrive. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have inquired about him when my hostess dropped the hand of a diplomat from this side of the iron curtain and held hers out to me.

      “Who is Forbes Allerdyce? The young man in the grey flannels?”

      She looked very blank. “But darling, I was going to ask you. You brought him, I distinctly saw you, at the gate . . . oh, Mr. Secretary, so nice of you to come. . . .”

      So I just assumed the unfortunate contretemps of the lily of the field and the bird of the air had broken things up before Mrs. Brent had a chance to present him, and let it go at that. All that mattered was that Mr. Forbes Allerdyce had made the afternoon a lovely thing for her, and it was very smart of her to have had him there. I saw him again as I drove down Foxhall Road. He was at the wheel of a large maroon convertible, bareheaded, waiting for a break in the traffic. But I had other things on my mind, Georgetown traffic being one of them and Sergeant Buck’s Miss Virginia Dolan the other, or I might possibly have examined what Mrs. Brent had said a little more closely.

      I put my car away in its alley corrugated-iron garage and walked down P Street toward home. It was the moment in Georgetown when the dusk, still more rose than amethyst, sifts through the trees softening the outlines of the old painted brick houses, making the place what it used to be, a simple unemotional village on the Potomac, with no fanfare and no political connotations, left, right, or center. The day’s-end traffic across the bridges from Washington was abruptly over. The street was empty except for a man waiting for a spotted dog to resume his walk and a sedate cat crossing to the other side, her mind on her own affairs. At least that’s all I saw till I got past the next tree and saw the taxi unloading at the curb in front of my house . . . and got my first glimpse of Sergeant Buck’s yellow chick.

      She was pure enchantment. I slowed practically to a standstill looking at her. The driver was lugging her bags up the steps, and the yellow chick was still at the curb, leaning in at the cab window, talking to someone inside. She was slender and graceful as a flower, and had one foot back like a dancer’s, lightly tiptoe on the bricks, poised for a last laughing word. The driver came back, she stepped away, waving her hand, and skimmed feather-light across the sidewalk up the steps. The taxi came by me at that moment, and a head grinning at me from ear to ear poked itself out the window. It had been a surprising afternoon and still was. We have group riding in taxicabs in Washington still, especially to and from the Union Station, and the one person who’d never get stuck with any of the characters most of us draw was right there, his hand up, thumb and forefinger describing the quick circle as eloquent as his grinning face. If there was a yellow chick within a mile of the Station, Archie Seaton would always be the guy to draw her.

      And she was okay. I got that, from the happy circle he pushed through the window at me. I didn’t get any more, but I was as delighted as I had been relieved, by the one look I’d got of her myself.

      She heard me coming and turned.

      “Hello,” I said, smiling at her. “I’m Grace Latham.”

      “Oh!” Her eyes bloomed into a smile blue and fresh as a new morning glory opening into the sunshine. “Hello!” she said. “I’m Ginny Dolan.”

      “Hello, Ginny.” I smiled again. “It’s nice you’re here.”

      I could see a dozen reasons, just offhand, why Archie Seaton had put so much feeling into that signal of his. She was a darling, cute as a kitten and very, very pretty. Her hair was

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