Henrietta had started toward the steps and the Watermelon turned to follow her, when he saw her standing on the top step, looking straight at him across Henrietta's shoulder. His first impulse was to stand and stare, his second, to turn and run back to Mike and James and his old clothes, his third, which he followed blindly, was to stumble forward, hat in hand, not from any respect for woman in the abstract, but just for her, her tiny feet, her small white teeth, her dimple. She would not come up to his shoulder by at least six inches, she was very slender, and in her high-waisted, yellow frock, she seemed a mere wisp of a girl. Her hair and eyes were brown, her cheeks flushed like the petals of an apple blossom. She had a crooked little smile that brought a single dimple in one soft cheek. Her hat was a big, flapping affair, covered with buttercups and daisies.
The Watermelon, gazing at her, forgot everything, Henrietta, dinner, the general. He stared and she stared back. The brown suit with the pale green stripe and the faint suggestion of red, lent an undeniable improvement to the broad shoulders and long limbs of the graceful Watermelon. The admirable shave and hair-cut the village barber had given him in exchange for his own quarter, revealed the square-cut chin and the good-natured, careless mouth of the born ne'er-do-well. Under the brim of the soft expensive panama, were his woman's eyes, now tragic and unhappy, for who was he but a tramp, a frequenter of the highways and back streets, an associate of James and Mike?
"Billy," said Henrietta, "we have had an adventure and picked up another guest. Miss Bartlett, Mr. Batchelor."
"Were you part of the adventure?" asked Billy, holding out her hand.
"Yes," said the Watermelon, incapable of further speech.
Henrietta presented him to Mr. Bartlett, a stout, red-faced gentleman of middle age. Wealth, success, self-complacency radiated from him like the rays of the sun. He grasped the hard brown hand of the Watermelon and looked the young man up and down, noticing the pin in his tie, the panama and the silk socks without seeming fairly to notice the man.
"William Hargrave Batchelor?" he murmured questioningly.
"The same," answered the general heartily, feeling that he had done something praiseworthy in capturing the young man. He drew off his gloves and beamed at the Watermelon.
"He is a young one to beat us, Bartlett. We ought to be Oslerized."
Bartlett's eyes gleamed and he shook the Watermelon's hand with renewed pleasure. "Youth," said he oratorically, "is hard to beat, General, but we aren't deaduns yet. I have had an occasional try at the Street, myself, Mr. Batchelor. You may have heard of me."