“We’ll stop at the house long enough to tell her you’re busy,” suggested Allison, as eager as a boy. He had been on his way home to dress for a business banquet, but such affairs came often, and impulsive adventures like this could be about once in a lifetime with him. He had played the grubbing game so assiduously that, while he had advanced, as one of his lieutenants said, from a street car strap to his present mastership of traction facilities, he had missed a lot of things on the way. He was energetic to make up for the loss, however. He felt quite ready to pour a few gallons of gasolene into his runabout and go straight on to Boston, or any other place Gail might suggest; and there was an exhilaration in his voice which was contagious.
“Let’s!” cried Gail, and, with a laugh which he had discarded with his first business promotion, Allison threw out another notch of speed, and whirled from the Seventy-second Street entrance up the Avenue to the proper turning, and halfway down the block, where he made a swift but smooth stop, bringing the step with marvellous accuracy to within an inch of the curb.
“Won’t you come in?” invited Gail.
“We’d stay too long,” grinned Allison, entering into the conspiracy with great fervour.
She flashed at him a smile and ran up the steps. She turned to him again as she waited for the bell to be answered, and nodded to him with frank comradery.
“Time me,” she called, and he jerked out his watch as she slipped in at the door.
Two vivacious looking young women, one tall and black-haired and the other petite and blonde, and both fashionably slender and both pretty, rushed out into the hall and surrounded her.
“We thought you’d never come,” rattled Lucile Teasdale, who was the petite blonde, and the daughter of the sister of the wife of Gail’s Uncle Jim.
“Who’s the man?” demanded Mrs. “Arly” Fosland, with breathless interest.
“Where’s my tea?” answered Gail.