"You think for yourself, don't you, Blanche Aurora?" laughed King, settling down comfortably into his pillow.
"I was bound I was goin' to see who it was could make Miss Linda sob, and sob, and besides, I wanted to see if the likeness was you that wasn't ever on her table before."
Long after the visitor's departure King lay, a deep line between his brows, his perplexed thoughts accompanied by the constant sound as of rain in the rustling Balm-of-Gilead leaves above him. Linda in wild tears; Linda placing a photograph of himself beside that of her father and all following Fred Whitcomb's visit; there was something here to be inquired into.
It was nearly noon when the laborers on the tennis court returned. King could hear their laughter as they approached the house; and shortly Whitcomb appeared beside the hammock, exasperatingly robust and gay, and wiping his moist brow.
"How goes it?" he asked, grasping the rope and swinging the couch.
"Stop that, or I'll murder you," growled King.
"Sure thing. I forgot," said Whitcomb as he tightened his hold and brought the chrysalis to a standstill. "Madge Lindsay's a scream," he continued. "She's more fun than a barrel of monkeys. She knows every word of the Winter Garden and Follies songs for the last two years. I'll get her started so you can hear her one of these times."
"Good Lord, deliver us!" uttered King devoutly.
"Got a grouch, old man?" asked Whitcomb with a solicitous change of tone. "Did Blanche A-roarer, the human siren, blow her whistle too near you? We met her and she said she was bringing you jell."
"She did, and it's safely stowed away under my sweater. What are you going to do next?"