Маленькая хозяйка большого дома / The Little Lady Of The Big House

11

On Dick’s face, at lunch, there was no sign of trouble over the Harvest Group. After lunch everybody went out for a walk.

Paula wore a tan linen blouse with white turnback collar[62]. A short skirt reached the knees. Skirt and trousers were of fawn-colored silk corduroy. Soft white gauntlets on her hands matched with the collar in the one emphasis of color. Her head was bare.

“I don’t see how you can keep such a skin and expose yourself to the sun this way,” Graham said.

“I don’t,” she smiled with a dazzle of white teeth. “That is, I don’t expose my face this way more than a few times a year.”

As four o’clock approached, Donald Ware returned in a car to the Big House. Dick was at the pool when the party arrived, and the girls were immediately insistent for the new song.

“It isn’t exactly a new song,” Dick explained, his gray eyes twinkling roguery, “and it’s not my song. It was sung in Japan before I was born, and, I think, before Columbus[63] discovered America. Also, it is a duet—a competitive duet with forfeit penalties[64] attached. Paula will sing it with me—I’ll teach you. Sit down there, that’s right—now all the rest of you gather around and sit down.”

Paula sat down, facing her husband, in the center of the sitting audience. Then he sang the song, which was short and which she quickly picked up