But Lynn stood loyal and steadfast at the foot of the steps, while she put the first necessary and searching question that was his due.
“Have you had whooping cough?” she said.
Hugh clutched his hair. He told her he [p56] was searching himself through all the crannies of his boyhood years. Yes, he remembered. He had undergone the affliction. There was a birthday party away back twenty, thirty, forty years through the mists, and she would have been at it, with her hair done in two little plaits and tied with blue ribbon. And he had to stay away because he had whooping cough.
Lynn looked very much relieved.
“What a good thing!” she said. “It is very seldom you get it twice, so we shan’t hurt you.”
“No,” he said gravely, looking down on them, “you really don’t look as if you would hurt me—much. But won’t you come on the verandah? And can the gentleman alight by himself?”
Lynn came up the steps a little shyly.
But Max, though he got off his tricycle, looked a bit worried.
“He won’t stand,” he said. “Will you lend me your hank’fust to tie him to the post? he’s a lood horse.”
“He means a blood horse,” explained Lynn in a low tone; “he always pretends his tricycle is a race-horse.”