“You dear boy,” she cried, “I’m so glad to see you!”
“You dear girl,” he responded, “I’m so glad you’re glad. My word! but we’re gay and festive, aren’t we? Are you always so gorgeously social as this?”
“No, this is a special occasion to get us all acquainted, and afterward, we’re to be just plain, everyday chums.”
“I see; and who is the elderly youth talking to the pretty crosspatch?”
Patty fairly giggled at his quick and apt descriptions.
“Elderly youth is just the right term for Mr. Leland,” she said, “but how did you know that pretty Milly Mills is—well, not exactly of a sunny disposition?”
“Oh, I can tell by the lines of her thumbs,” said Floyd, nonsensically. “But, tell me, how does your own sunny disposition thrive in Rome? Dost like the pictures?”
“I do like the pictures,” said Patty, with a little sigh, “if there weren’t so many millions of ’em.”
“Yes, there are some few, but then you need see only one at a time.”
“But it’s the same theme over and over. I get so tired of Saint Sebastian and his arrows, and Susannah, and that everlasting Thorn Extractor.”