“If you had told me this morning, Mr. Baxter,” said Miss Johnson coyly, “I shouldn’t have telegraphed mother I’d be home day after to-morrow.”
“Have a highball, Baxter?” asked Lansing suddenly.
“Not to-night, thanks. I’ve got to be running along. Father may be waiting up for me. Night, everybody.”
And he was off. The group watched him stride swiftly down the cement walk. Sammy was the first to speak.
“Well, I call that sociability, don’t you? What the dickens is the matter with him? First time I’ve ever seen Ollie Baxter with a grouch. A grouch, that’s what it was.”
“I don’t think it was very nice of him to come up here with a grouch,” complained the bride.
“I guess the crowd was too thick for him,” said one of the young men solemnly, and then winked at the girl from Indianapolis.
“He’s got something on his mind,” announced young Lansing, professionally.
“The old man, I guess,” said Sammy. “If my father behaved like old man Baxter does, I’d take him across my knee and spank him.”