The girl laughed, and such a laugh, Dick Minot was sure, had never been heard in Sunbeam before. At that moment the driver leaped to his seat, breathing hard, and had it out with the wheel.
"Exeunt, laughingly, from Sunbeam," said Minot in the girl's ear.
The car rolled asthmatically from the little settlement, and out into the sand and heat of a narrow road.
"Eight miles to San Marco," said the driver out of the corner of his mouth. "Sit tight. I'm going to let her out some."
Again Dick Minot glanced at the girl beside him. Fate was in a jovial mood to-day to grant him this odd ride in the company of one so charming! He could not have told what she wore, but he knew she was all in white, and he realized the wisdom of white on a girl who had, in her hair and eyes, colors to delight the most exacting. About her clung a perfume never captured in a bottle; her chin was the chin of a girl with a sense of humor; her eyes sparkled with the thrill of their adventure together. And the dimple, in repose now, became the champion dimple of the world.
Minot tried to think of some sprightly remark, but his usually agile tongue remained silent. What was the matter with him? Why should this girl seem different, somehow, from all the other girls he had ever met? When he looked into her eyes a flood of memories—a little sad—of all the happy times he had ever known overwhelmed him. Memories of a starlit sea—the red and white awnings of a yacht—the wind whispering through the trees on a hillside—an orchestra playing in the distance—memories of old, and happy, far-off things—of times when he was even younger, even more in love with life. Why should this be? He wondered.
And the girl, looking at him, wondered, too—was he suddenly bereft of his tongue?
"I haven't asked you the conventional question?" she said at last. "How do you like Florida?"
"It's wonderful, isn't it?" Minot replied, coming to with a start. "I can speak of it even more enthusiastically than any of the railroad folders do. And yet, it's only recent—my discovery of its charms."
"Really?"