“Miss Curzon, with one of his roses in her hair, watching him from a corner.”
Mrs. Dick beat me stalking Jack, but I was just behind, a close second. He didn’t see her until she got right up to him and rapped him on the arm with her fan.
“Dear Jack,” she says, all smiles and sugar; “dear Jack, I’ve just heard. Edith has told me, though I’d suspected something for a long, long time, you rogue,” and she fetched him another kittenish clip with the fan.
Jack looked about the way I once saw old Miss Curley, the president of the Good Templars back in our town in Missouri, look at a party when she half-swallowed a spoonful of her ice cream before she discovered that it was flavored with liquor.
But he stammered something and hurried Miss Churchill away, though not before a fellow who was going by had wrung his hand and said, “Congratulations, old chap. Just heard the news.”
Jack’s only idea seemed to travel, and to travel far and fast, and he dragged his partner along to the other end of the room, while I followed the band. We had almost gone the length of the course, when Jack, who had been staring ahead mighty hard, shied and balked, for there, not ten feet away, stood Miss Moore, carrying his lilies, and blushing and smiling at something young Blakely was saying to her.
I reckon Jack guessed what that something was, but just then Blakely caught sight of him and rushed up to where he was standing.
“I congratulate you, Jack,” he said. “Miss Moore’s a charming girl.”
And now Miss Churchill slipped her hand from his arm and turned and looked at Jack. Her lips were laughing, but there was something in her eye which made Jack turn his own away.
“Oh, you lucky Jack,” she laughed. “You twice lucky Jack.”