Down somewhere in a girl's heart lies the gambler's instinct. Lillian would have thrown away then and there the certainty of Ned Perkins' timely invitation for the torturing suspense, the alluring chance, that attended the Sophomore president's second choice. Perkins, in his simple masculine dullness, never guessed this.
"I don't believe he knows yet; he wouldn't tell over at the house if he did. Another plum for unengaged Roble."
Perkins would have been less at ease over the condition of engaged Roble could he have looked into the little east music-room where Lillian played accompaniments, and Cap Smith, leaning over a wicker chair, went through the music of his part. These cozy rehearsals in the quiet afternoons had resulted in Smith's asking himself, during a cut home through the Quad, why he had never noticed Lillian Arnold in particular. Connor, the director, had a keener eye, evidently. She was pretty, dashing and real good fun. Perkins was entitled to respect for his selection. Lillian was "all right;" this is a masculine term which may mean anything from mild approval to the rapture of "just one girl." The mild interpretation, of course, is to be put upon Smith's use of the term, even after he had been to Roble two evenings. Their talk was about the opera, nothing further, and when he had taken his high note with just the proper emotional slur, they both laughed. To be honest, there had been one chat on the moonlit steps of the Museum, but all of this went down on the blue fraternity-paper among other confidences.
One afternoon, in the middle of a Spring-time walk, Smith gave utterance to a decision concerning which he had already written, dutifully, to an interested party in the South. They had passed the willow-fringed bank of Lagunita, the red boathouse, the double avenue of young pines, and, crossing into the back road, strolled down to the low gate opposite the Farm; this they climbed and came into a little hollow where knowing people find yellow violets. He had just given her a frank compliment.
"You are the best fence-taker I ever saw for a girl."
"That's one practical result of an hour's credit in gym-work," she laughed. "Sometimes, on lovely days like this, I feel almost as though I could pole-vault the way you do. It must be glorious to go sailing over the bar."
"And hear it come clattering down after you?"
They sat on the soft, new grass, and Lillian caught, one after another, the shy yellow faces peering at her through the long leaves. She looked so spring-like, so much a part of the fresh, young landscape in its robes of early February, as she half reclined to reach out for a blossom larger and yellower than the rest—a pose that she knew was good—that the Sophomore president put an end to suspense.
"I had expected to lead the cotillion with Miss Martin," he began, "but she has gone South, so I'm badly left. I'm afraid you are engaged for it, aren't you?"