"Not from any one of them," laughed Jeffard; and Myra remarked that Connie's hand was still on his arm. "I am just up from Old Mexico."
"And you made a straight shoot for a church—for our church and our pew. Good boy! You knew right where to find us on a Sunday evening, didn't you?"
Jeffard laughed again. Since a time unremembered of him it had not been so easy to laugh and be glad.
"Don't believe him, Mrs. Bartrow," he protested. "My motive was a little mixed, I'll confess, but it was altogether better than that. I was passing, and it occurred to me that I hadn't seen the inside of an American church for a long time."
"Or of any other kind, I'll be bound," Bartrow amended; and then, in a spirit of sheer ruthlessness: "Why don't you say something, Connie? Call him down and make him tell the truth about it."
"You don't give any one a chance to say anything," retorts the quiet one, with a summer-lightning flash of the old mock-antagonism. And then to Jeffard: "We are all very glad to see you again, Mr. Jeffard. Will you be in town long?"
Bartrow took the words out of his mouth and made answer for him.
"Of course he will; he is going to settle down and be home-folks—aren't you, Jeffard? Fall in and let's walk to where we can wrestle it out without freezing. It's colder than ordinary charity standing here."
Now the way to his hotel lay behind him and Jeffard hesitated. Whereupon Bartrow turned with a laugh derisive.