“Oh, there wasn’t anything patriotic about it,” said Phil. “I just didn’t see the girl.”
“You’re calloused,” asserted Sue. “You’ve played polo so long that you’ve got a basswood ball for a heart. Here you are, twenty-six, handsome——”
“Loyalty, thy name is Sue Townsend!”
“And wholesome and good and awfully popular; and rich, too, with such a place, such woods and streams!”
“And such a blarney of a little friend,” added Phil.
“It’s not blarney,” Sue declared. “No; I leave all that for Larry. Phil, where did you pick him up?”
Phil gave a quick glance round at the red-cheeked, red-haired groom riding at the prescribed distance behind. “He was born in Dublin,” said he, grinning, “and I got him in Hongkong. He hasn’t been twenty feet away from me since. The fellows call him my ‘shadow.’”
“But, of course, you’re sure to meet your fate some day,” went on Sue. “And your kind, when they do fall in love, get fearfully hard hit.”
“Huh!”
Sue nodded wisely. “I don’t believe you’ll even survive what’s in store for you this very week,” she declared.