“Returned war hero!” Joy cried, her mind a suspended blank to be written over with wonder. Jerry said nothing with fierce intensity of question.
“Why, yes,” said Mabel. “Stop nudging me, Phil, I will if I want to!—He was over for a long time, and brought back millions of those little citation ribbons which he gave me with instructions to bury—stop, Phil!”
Another man-servant—did they have two butlers?—announced dinner at this moment, and Mabel gave Joy to her brother, leading the way with Jerry and leaving her husband to the girl with the white forehead, who so far had said nothing of any irrelevance, and so had made little impression on the party.
As they settled themselves behind the fruit cocktails, Joy watched Phil Lancaster, who kept his eyes fixed on Jerry across the table.
“Is—is the resemblance so very striking?” she probed gently.
“Not so very, after the first look.” He took his eyes away from Jerry with a jolt and landed them on Joy for one perfunctory second. “Your friend is quite a different type.” His eyes found Jerry again; and Jerry’s short, thick lashes quivered as she raised her chin higher and looked determinedly at Mabel, who was stretching out a large fund of small talk.
“That girl with the brown hair and white forehead—is she another cousin?” asked Joy, still quietly insistent that he should talk to her.
He drew his eyes back to Joy. “No; she’s a Bryn Mawr girl, one of Mabel’s protégés. Mabel’s awfully keen on younger girls.”
“You don’t like ‘younger girls,’ do you?” His tone had been descriptive.
“Why—has Mabel been getting biographic?”