"I'm mad about her," he said simply, and then, for some unaccountable reason, gave over being loquacious and lapsed into a state of almost lugubrious quiet.
She glanced at his face, furtively at first, as if uncertain of his mood, then with a prolonged stare that was frankly curious and amused.
"Don't lose your head, Leslie," she said softly, almost purringly.
He started. "Oh, I say, Sara, I'm not likely to—"
"Stranger things have happened," she interrupted, with a shake of her head. "I can't afford to have you making love to her and getting tired of the game, as you always do, dear boy, just as soon as you find she's in love with you. She is too dear to be hurt in that way. You mustn't—"
"Good Lord!" he cried; "what a bounder you must take me for! Why, if I thought she'd—But nonsense! Let's talk about something else. Yourself, for instance."
She leaned back with a smile on her lips, but not in her eyes; and drew a long, deep breath. He was hard hit. That was what she wanted to know.
They found Booth at the inn. He was sitting on the old-fashioned porch, surrounded by bags and boys. As he climbed into the car after the bags, the boys grinned and jingled the coins in their pockets and ventured, almost in unison, the intelligence that they would all be there if he ever came back again. Big and little, they had transported his easel and canvases from place to place for three weeks or more and his departure was to be regarded as a financial calamity.
"I could go to ten circuses this summer if that many of 'em was to come to town," said one small citizen as Croesus rode away in a cloud of village dust.
"Gee, I wish to goodness he'd come back," was the soulful cry of another.