“Oh, are there goin’ to be races?” asked Jennie, nibbling prettily at the edges of the cone sparsely filled with vanilla ice cream, which the scarlet-faced man who presided over the gasoline stove and its adjacent can of cold stuff, handed her with a wipe of his sticky fingers on a long-suffering apron-front.
“Get onto Gus, will you?” she whispered, as she bridled, laughed, blushed, and giggled by turns, under the baleful light of Mr. Bamber’s pale-green eyes. “I ’xpect he’ll kill me jus’ the minute he gets a chance. Gus hates you; did you know it, Mr. Whitcomb?”
“Hates me? Why should he? I’m sure I’ve given the fellow tips enough,” David said arrogantly.
All the light went out of the girl’s blue eyes.
“You’ve given me ‘tips,’ as you call them, too,” she said soberly. “Do you want to know what I’ve done with ’em? I jus’ hated to take money from you; but I didn’t know what else t’ do; so I——”
“Well, what did you do with the munificent sums I’ve bestowed on you from time to time?” inquired David good-humoredly. “I’d really like to know.”
The girl had finished her ice cream, leathery receptacle and all. She began pulling on her white cotton gloves.
“Let’s go outside, where Gus can’t see us, an’ I’ll show you,” she whispered.
“We’ll go up to the grand stand,” David proposed. “One of my horses is going to race,” he added magnificently, “and you shall bet on him. Would you like to? I’ll pay, of course, if you lose.”
“Isn’t betting kind o’ wicked?” asked the girl innocently. “The Meth’dist minister said it was. Me an’ Gus went t’ church an’ heard a sermon las’ Sunday night.”