I laughed as I caught the thing up and whirled, my hand outstretched to lay it in her own. She was on her feet, pulling down her belt, and paused to lift away a leaf that clung to her snowy skirt. And just here, the gardener's voice lifted startlingly across the park to some one distant and invisible:
"Better bring paris green, Jud; it's the only way we'll ever get rid of 'em," he bawled. "I see they're going after the leaves now, and they can live on them and air. Pizen'll fix 'em, though!"
The comb outstretched, I stood staring at Frances, doubled over and writhing. And then, with a long-drawn gasp that was half a screech, her lithesome figure straightened, her head went back, and from her throat there trilled the very joy of health and youth and happy days.
"Oh!" she gasped, her hand pressing to her side. And while I looked at her anxiously, she went on pantingly, her eyes bright with tears:
"'But shall it? Answer, darling, answer no,
And trust me not at all or all in all.'"
"Jove!" I said delightedly, placing the comb in her outstretched hand and pressing it—the hand, I mean, dash it! "I do, don't you know! I trust you all in all!"
CHAPTER XXX
THE JUDGE FIXES "FOXY GRANDPA"
"But tell you, sir, he is not my son!" The judge was bending over the desk 'phone as I looked in a half hour later. His voice rose in a crescendo of rage: "Wha—what's that? Do I want to speak with him? Certainly not, sir—and I won't!... Um, yes—John W. Billings—yes, that's his name.... Stuff and nonsense, sir! He's up-stairs now in his room.... Says what?"—the judge's eyes rolled frowningly upward as he listened; then he licked his lips and bent again, speaking with passionate incisiveness: "Why, dammit, man, I've just this minute been talking to him—just left him, y'understand.... Certainly your man's an impostor—you ought to know that!... Yes, this is Judge Billings, himself.... Eh? Oh, that's all right, but now let me tell you something"—he cleared his throat and gathered his voice in cold, deliberate accents: "You let me be annoyed again from your precinct, and I can promise you that.... Um, well that's all right then.... 'Bye!"