“Hallo!” cried Austin, “there’s Max!”
“The one and only Max?”
“No other. What’s in the wind now? Small-pox or scarlet-fever?”
“How fast he runs!”
“Max hardly ever walks—he hasn’t time. Hi! Hallo!”
Austin slipped his hand from Frances’s arm, dived adroitly on one side, and managed to catch his friend in headlong course.
“Hallo!” panted Max, in return. “So sorry, old chap; I didn’t see it was you.” He disengaged himself and stepped with outstretched hand towards Austin’s sister. “And this is Miss Frances?” he continued, smiling frankly.
“Rather!” remarked Austin, with a certain gracious condescension, as becomes one whose sister is of the right sort to make sisterless fellows envious. “I’ve been telling her what a singular number you are; and she wants to go shares in your soup-and-blanket business.”
“It’s awfully jolly of her,” said Max, who had meanwhile exchanged with Frances a comrade’s grasp. “We wanted some more girls badly in Woodend.”
“Humph!” said Austin slyly.