Not my lips—you’re too near.
Come along, lovey; come along, duckie;
Tickle me, tickle me here.”
CHAPTER XXX—HALF IN LOVE
The Faun Man looked up from his writing. Peter had been with him on The Skylark for five days—five gorgeous days. He had found to his surprise that the golden woman was of the party. So far as outward appearances went, the picture-smashing incident might never have happened; Cherry conducted herself as a good comrade and the golden woman called her “dear.” They had to act as friends, since the Faun Man had taken rooms for them at the same hotel that they might chaperone each other. The men slept on board the house-boat.
It was nearly six. The last of the Finals had been rowed; the Regatta was ended. Far up the course one could still hear the distant cheering from the lawn where prizes were being distributed. The most sensational race of the afternoon had been the Diamond Sculls, in which Hardcastle had won by a bare half-length. Peter still tingled with the madness of the excitement, the splendid grit of the contested fight and the wildness of the applause. He had seen a slight young hero lifted out of his shell and carried shoulder-high; he wanted something like that to happen to himself so that Cherry might approve of him. He had just come from accompanying her back to The Red Lion; in an hour, when she had changed for dinner, he was going to fetch her. He had one more night before him—the gayest of them all, when the crews broke training, and then——. How often would he see her again? The gray old town would recover from its invasion, and settle back into routine and eventless quiet. Would something similar happen to his life? Nevertheless, he had one more night.
As he climbed aboard The Skylark and entered, the Faun Man looked up. “Peter, i’m tired of being respectable—I want to be vulgar.”