She hesitated, considering him with doubt on her face.
"Don't you trust him!" called Mrs. Randolph. "He is longing to waltz you under the mistletoe!"
He strode across to his wife.
"How dare you blacken my reputation in the face of all these ladies!" he cried sternly.
She laughed up at him with fearless, roguish eyes.
"Have I suggested anything that was not in your mind to do?"
A burst of laughter assailed him, while he walked off muttering,—quite audibly,—"These women! these women!"
The jingling of sleighbells set the keener-eared of the guests to listening.
"Polly wouldn't come in a sleigh, would she?" queried one.
"They're stopping here!" announced Miss Castlevaine from a front window. "But it isn't Polly," she added, "it's—goodness!—it's Santa Claus!"