"Isabel!" he cried, fire kindling in his face. "You would? You would?"
"If I get my ride——"
He seized her, boy-clumsily, and boy-like lavished his impetuous kisses.
"You'll get anything," he promised, half-choked by excitement. "And everything. Oh, Isabel!"
Flavia's delicate music flowed on and on. Before Mr. Rose had finished his discussion, Corrie and Isabel entered the room, and the evening ended without any possibility of Gerard's resuming the theme commenced in the fountain arcade.
When the group separated for the night, Corrie detained his sister at the foot of the wide, gleaming stairs.
"Don't rise early in the morning to give me my coffee, Other Fellow," he said. "I shan't be starting for the course at the usual time. I have been working pretty steadily and I need to rest for the race itself, day after to-morrow."
She leaned across the bannister to him; the two young faces framed in young ripples of bright hair resembled each other very strongly in their twin moods of exaltation and radiant, half-incredulous happiness.
"You do not feel unwell, dear? You have not driven too much?"
"Not a bit. But I'm sleepy," he caught a frond of a tall Madeiran fern that was placed in its jardiniere on the step opposite him, winding the satin-green strip over his finger, "honestly, all in with sleepiness, and I'm going to sleep to-night as if it was the last quiet night's sleep I'd ever get. See you to-morrow, kid sister."