‘If I wanted your nasty “baccy,”’ says Betty, ‘it isn’t likely you would be able to keep it from me. Give Mr. Crosby a match.’
‘Thanks, I have one,’ says Crosby. He had accepted Dom’s offer of a cigarette without hesitation, and, indeed, would have smoked it to the bitter end rather than offend any member of the little group around him. They all please him; they all seem in unison with him—frank, happy, rollicking youngsters, without a scrap of real harm amongst them. Perhaps the secret of their success with Crosby lies in the fact that, in spite of his being well in the thirties, he is still a boy himself at heart, with a spice of mischief in him not to be controlled. The cigarette, however, proves very tolerable, and Susan having seated herself where he can distinctly see her, he feels that he is going to spend an uncommonly pleasant afternoon.
‘It’s a shame to say Betty’s got a temper,’ says Susan. ‘I’m sure she hasn’t—not a bad one, any way.’
‘You needn’t defend me, Susan,’ says Betty, clasping her long, lean arms behind her head. ‘I prefer to do it for myself, and’—with a fell glance at the doomed Dominick—‘I think I know where revenge lies.’
‘I give in!’ cries Mr. Fitzgerald frantically. ‘Betty, pax!’
‘Never,’ says Betty.
‘If you burn my fly-book a second time, I warn you that there will be murder,’ says Dom; and then Betty has mercy.
‘A public retractation, then!’ demands she viciously.
‘A hundred of them. I swear to you, Mr. Crosby, that I wronged her, and that her temper is like that of an angel, and not a bit like our Aunt Jeremiah’s’—softly, ‘May I be forgiven!’
‘Did you hear her in church?’ asks Carew, turning to Crosby. ‘Aunt Jemima, I mean, not Betty. She was mad with Sarah this morning——’