"Oh, I do hope so. I want just once to meet him and hear him talk."
"Even if his voice has a falsetto crack in it?" Billy inquired.
"Even if he's—dumb!" Cicely's climax was lost in a burst of laughter, in the midst of which she fled from the table.
"Never you mind!" she proclaimed from the doorway. "I'll find a way to meet him yet. You needn't laugh at me, either, for you're every one of you hero-worshippers, if you'd only own it." Then she crossed over to the piazza of Valhalla, where Phebe was drying her hair in the sunshine. Phebe received the great news disdainfully.
"Oh, that man!" she said, with something that came dangerously near to being a sniff. "I saw him. After most of the people were gone, he came down and went into the water."
"Really?" Cicely's tone was rapt. "I wish I'd seen him. How did he look?"
"Atrocious. He is bow-legged, and he wore a rose-colored suit. Against the green of the waves, he looked like a huge pink wishbone."
"Did he swim beautifully?"
Phebe shook her hair back from her shoulders.
"Like a merman," she said; "a forsaken merman with the gout."