"What was there in that tea I made?" inquired Kathleen lazily. "Mother has the headache, too. Isn't it a shame on such an evening."
"Too bad," said Phil perfunctorily. He approached the hammock and neither he nor Kathleen noted that Edgar made an unostentatious departure such as the comic papers describe as a cat-like sneak. Certainly Pluto could not have moved any more quietly, and his heart was gay.
"Headache!" he thought, the even teeth broadly exhibited. "What that headache needs is the water-cure"; and the boarders sitting out in front of the Wright cottage heard the "Toreador Song" blithely whistled by some one coming across the field.
When Edgar arrived at the farmhouse he looked about for a familiar figure. Among the little group, Eliza Brewster was the only one he knew. He approached her with his most debonair manner.
"Good evening, Eliza. Will you please tell Miss Manning I am here?"
"She's got the headache, Mr. Fabian."
"So Mr. Sidney said; but I thought she might see me for just a minute. I want to tell her something important."
"Well, that's too bad, 'cause she's gone to bed. I'll take any message you want me to, and give it to her in the morning. I'd rather not disturb her now 'cause I just took her up a pitcher o' water and she told me she was goin' to try to go to sleep."
Edgar was so blankly silent that Eliza spoke again.