“You haven’t the heart to refuse,” protested handsome Dick, coming nearer, and again smiling down at her.
“I have a prior claim,” laughed Allison, stepping up and taking her by the arm. “It’s my turn to guide Miss Sargent on the two-passenger sled.”
There was something new about Allison to-night. There was the thrill and the exultation of youth in his voice, and twenty years seemed to have been dropped from his age. There was an intensity about him, too, and also a proprietor-like compulsion, which decided Gail on a certain diversion she had entertained. She was oppressed with men to-night. The world was full of them, and they had closed too nearly around her.
Suddenly she broke away with a laugh, and, taking the two-passenger sled from Smith Boyd, who still stood in preoccupation at the edge of the group, she picked it up and ran with it, and threw herself face forward on it, as she had done when she was a kiddy, and shot down the hill, to the intense disapproval of the Reverend Boyd! Dick Rodley, ever alert in his chosen profession, grabbed a light steel racer from the edge of the bank, and, with a magnificent run, slapped himself on the sled, and darted in pursuit! The rector’s lip curled the barest trace at one corner, but Edward E. Allison, looking down the hill, grinned, and lit a cigar.
“Ted Teasdale, come right over here,” ordered Lucile.
“Can’t,” carelessly returned Ted. “I’m having a serious flirtation with Miss Kenneth.”
“You have to stop, and flirt with me,” Lucile insisted, and going over, she slipped a hand within his sleeve, and passed the other arm affectionately around Marion Kenneth. “Gail stole the ornament.”
“Serves you right,” charged Arly Fosland. “You stole him from me. Come on, Houston, bring out the Palisade Special.”
Houston Van Ploon, who was a brother to all ladies, obediently dragged forward the number two bob-sled, and set its nose at the brow of the hill, and the merry mob piled on.
“Coming Allison?” called Cunningham. “There’s room for you both, Doctor.”