She nodded back at him tenderly. “And although separated by circumstances—I in the car and you on the curb. From my cousin’s descriptions, I adore rangers. Don’t I, dar-rling?”
“No one could doubt that, eh, Jane?” Harford made answer for Miss Lauderdale, whom he had relieved of her fan with as much solicitude as though each ostrich feather weighed a pound.
“I do really. Why not?” Low and luringly Irene laughed. “You must look awfully picturesque in your uniform of forest green, your cavalry hat and laced boots.”
“Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m a cowman, not a ranger,” Pape thought advisable to state in a tone calculated to reach the ears of her responsible for his presence in their midst. “But most of the park service members are my friends. I live on the edge of the playground and know them right well.”
The young girl refused to have her enthusiasm quashed. “Well, that’s just as good. You have their spirit without being tied to the stake of routine, as it were. I detest routine, don’t you? Or do you? On second thought, you’re much better off. Don’t you think he is, dar-rling?”
In the dimming of the auditorium lights, she leaned closer to him; seemed to transfer the fulsomely drawled term of endearment from her relative to him; added in a cross between murmur and whisper:
“Isn’t dar-rling a difficult word—hard to say seriously? Fancy caring that much for any one—I mean any one of one’s own sex. Of course, I hope really to love a man that much some day. That is, I do unless I go in for a career. Careers do keep one from getting fat, though. As I am constantly telling my mother——”
“S-sh!”
Pape was relieved by Mrs. Allen’s silencing sibilant.