“I believe you are the first choice, if he is really choosing,” Amabel Grantham decided. “I should like to ask you a question.”
“Ask it, by all means,” said Gwynedd.
“Does he ever ask you to show him how to hold his mallet, and then do idiotic things, such as managing to touch your hand?”
“Never,” was Gwynedd's answer. “The young man from Troy used to do it, and then beg pardon and turn red.”
“I don't understand him, or I don't understand Captain Palliser's story,” Amabel Grantham argued. “Lucy and I are quite out of the running, but I honestly believe that he takes as much notice of us as he does of any of you. If he has intentions, he 'doesn't act the part,' which is pure New York of the first water.”
“He said, however, that the things that mattered were not only titles, but looks. He asked how many of us were 'lookers.' Don't be modest, Amabel. Neither you nor Lucy are out of the running,” Beatrice amiably suggested.
“Ladies first,” commented Amabel, pertly. There was no objection to being supported in one's suspicion that, after all, one was a “looker.”
“There may be a sort of explanation,” Honora put the idea forward somewhat thoughtfully. “Captain Palliser insists that he is much shrewder than he seems. Perhaps he is cautious, and is looking us all over before he commits himself.”
“He is a Temple Barholm, after all,” said Gwynedd, with boldness. “He's rather good looking. He has the nicest white teeth and the most cheering grin I ever saw, and he's as 'rich as grease is,' as I heard a housemaid say one day. I'm getting quite resigned to his voice, or it is improving, I don't know which. If he only knew the mere A B C of ordinary people like ourselves, and he committed himself to me, I wouldn't lay my hand on my heart and say that one might not think him over.”
“I told you she was tremendously taken with him,” said her sister. “It's come to this.”