"Mr. Rollins," confided my Husband, "has a slight headache this morning."
"Why, that's too bad," sympathized Ann Woltor.
"No, it isn't a bad one at all," contradicted my Husband. "Just the very mildest one possible—under the circumstances. It was really very late when he got in again last night. And very wet." From under his casually lowered eyes a single glance of greeting shot out at me.
"Now, there you are again!" cried George Keets. "Flirting! You married people! Something that anyone else would turn out as mere information,—'The Ice Man has just left two chunks of ice!' or 'Mr. Rollins has a headache'!—you go and load up with some mysterious and unfathomable significance! Glances pass! Your wife flushes!" "Mysterious?" shrugged my Husband. "Unfathomable? Why it's clear as crystal. The madam says, 'Let there be a headache'—and there is a headache!"
As Allan John joined the group at the fireplace everybody began talking weather again. From the chuckle of the birch- logs to the splash on the window-pane the little groups shifted and changed. Everybody seemed to be waiting for something. On the neglected breakfast table even the gay upstanding hemispheres of grapefruit rolled over on their beds of ice to take another nap.
In a great flutter of white and laughter the May Girl herself came prancing over the threshold. It wasn't just the fact of being in white that made her look so astonishingly festal; she was almost always in white. Not yet the fact of laughter. Taken all in all I think she was the most radiantly laughing youngster that I have ever known. But most astonishingly festal she certainly looked, nevertheless. Maybe it was the specially new and chic little twist which she had given her hair. Maybe it was the absurdly coquettish dab of black court-plaster which she had affixed to one dimply cheek.
"Oh, if I'm going to be engaged to-day to a real artist," she laughed, "I've certainly got to take some extra pains with my personal appearance. Why, I've hardly slept all night," she confided ingenuously, "I was so excited!"
"Yes, won't it be interesting," whispered the Bride to George Keets, "to see what Mr. Kennilworth will really do? He's so awfully temperamental! And so—so inexcusably beautiful. Whatever he does is pretty sure to be interesting. Now up- stairs—all day yesterday—wouldn't it——?"
"Yes, wouldn't it be interesting," glowed Ann Woltor quite unexpectedly, "if he'd made her something really wonderful? Something that would last, I mean, after the game was over? Even just a toy, something that would outlast Time itself. Something that even when she was old she could point to and say, 'Claude Kennilworth made that for me when—we were young'."
"Why, Ann Woltor!" I stammered. "Do you feel that way about him? Does—does he make you feel that way, too!"