"You never saw such excitement!" cried Hilda. "Most of the games were deuce for both sides before anybody got it!"
"Very close," was Leslie's simpler version.
Louise crept to her window and peered down into the bower. Hilda and Leslie were holding one racquet between them. It was his racquet and she was twining her fingers playfully in and out among the strings. A feeling of suffocation closed suddenly upon Louise's throat.
And just then Barry walked into the bower. He had been exploring the delightful wild endroit, and hoping that Louise might suddenly appear, with some lovely tangle of wood and vine for background. For he hailed from a country where trees are scarce, and one's backgrounds from childhood are sand, desert sand. His life had grown suddenly so rich....
Barry was welcomed. Mrs. Needham made room for him beside her on the rustic bench. She looked at him a little shyly, but with the ecstatic admiration, also, of one who would say: "This is the man we're giving our daughter to!"
But where was Louise? Her mother had scarcely seen her since the return from Frankfort. How strangely she was behaving.
"I believe she's lying down," said Barry, his tone warm with shielding tenderness and apology. "She got up so early to meet the boat. It was wonderful of her!"
The two young champions were giving Aunt Marjie a fuller account of the tennis combat. They still held the racquet between them. Both were flushed, keen-eyed, ridiculously happy. How soon he had recovered! Louise, up at her window, remembered Leslie's mood at an earlier hour. At dawn she might have had him. Now it was too late. "Oh, the injustice of it!" she cried, her hands crushing her breast. But as she looked down into his glowing face, she realized a swift sense of humiliation. "He didn't care after all," she told herself.
Hilda and Leslie evinced great willingness to convey the luncheon invitation to Barrett O'Donnell. Leslie, of course, volunteered to go, and Hilda, of course, said she simply would go too. So off they raced, still holding the tennis racquet between them.