‘No,’ says Betty; ‘a little silver brooch—an anchor.’
‘That means hope,’ says Dominick solemnly. ‘Susan, he is coming back next year. What are you going to say to him?’
‘Just exactly what everybody else is going to say to him,’ says Susan, who is now crimson. ‘And I didn’t want that horrid brooch at all.’
‘Still, you took it,’ says Betty. ‘I call that rather mean, to take it, and then say you didn’t want it.’
‘Well, what was I to do?’
‘Refuse it, mildly but firmly,’ says Mr. Fitzgerald. ‘The acceptance of it was, in my opinion, as good as the acceptance of James. When he does come back, Susan, I don’t see how you are to get out of being Mrs. James. That brooch is a regular binder. How does it seem to you, Mr. Crosby?’
‘You see, I haven’t heard all the evidence yet,’ says Crosby, who is looking at Susan’s flushed, half-angry, wholly-delightful face. James, whoever he is, seems to have been a good deal in her society at one time.
‘There’s no evidence,’ says she wrathfully, ‘and I wish you boys wouldn’t be so stupid! As for the brooch, I hate it; I never wear it.’
‘Well, if ever anyone gives me a present I shall wear it every day and all day long,’ says Betty. ‘What’s the good of having a lover if people don’t know about it?’
‘Is that so?’ says Mr. Fitzgerald, regarding her with all the air of one to whom now the road seems clear. ‘Then the moment I become a millionaire—and there seems quite an immediate prospect of it just now—I shall buy you the Koh-i-Noor, and you shall wear it on your beauteous brow, and proclaim me as your unworthy lover to all the world.’