Carmella Commands
She was not yet ready to reveal her knowledge of English.
Before school that afternoon, Carmella telephoned to the Barrington home. To reach Dixon was a matter of convincing the butler.
“Hello, Mr. Dixon!” she said. “I can talk now. I’m on a pay station phone. “What was that you were asking?”
Then⸺
“Oh, Mr. Dixon, what a lark!”
Then a final direction:
“Not in sight of school. Mr. Carroll might see.”
A quarter of an hour later she joined him, around the corner.
“Where’d you like to go?” asked Dixon, as she jumped into the car.
“Anywhere in the world but Doty Street and Greendale. Drive me through the swell parts of the city, will you? I never really did see it all.”
For two hours Dixon drove her through the newer and finer residential streets, avoiding only the section near the Barrington house. He knew the names of the owners of most of the finer houses, and Carmella made him tell them all. Once she had him drive around the block and twice past a house that particularly took her fancy.
Carmella sat absorbed, and Dixon would have been surprised had he known what a remarkably good record she could have made in an examination on the
[204]
