She opened her eyes. Her two soft arms stole up around his neck, and she lifted her lips.
“You little devil,” Dick cried, almost at the same instant that he kissed her.
“She deserves to be spanked,” he told Billy grimly at the door. “She got in my apartment when I was out, and insisted on staying there till I came in, to make me a visit.”
“He doesn’t understand me,” Betty complained, as she cuddled confidingly in the corner of the taxi-cab, “when I’m serious he doesn’t realize or appreciate it, and he doesn’t understand the nature of my practical jokes.”
“I don’t like—practical jokes,” Dick said. “Have you seen Preston Eustace, Billy?”
“I haven’t seen Caroline,” Billy said, as if that disposed of all the interrogatory remarks that might be addressed to him in the present or the future.
“It’s a nice-looking river,” Betty said, looking out at the softly gleaming surface of the Hudson, as their cab took the drive. “It looks strange to-night, though, laden with all kinds of queer little boats. I wonder how it would feel to be drifting down it, or up it, on a barque or a barkentine—I don’t know what a barkentine is—all dead like Elaine or Ophelia,—with your hands neatly folded across your breast?”
“For heaven sake’s, Betty,” Billy cried, “I don’t like your style of conversation. I’m in a state of gloom myself, to-night.”
“I didn’t say I was in a state of gloom,” Betty said. They rode the rest of the way in silence, but when Dick got out of the cab to open her door for her, she whispered to him, “I’m awfully ashamed, Dick,” before she fled up-stairs through the darkened hallway of her own home.