At the corner they turned up the cross street. A short distance farther, on the angle of a small plaza, intruded into the gray city vista a green stretch of grass and shrubbery. The Colonel wondered if it was the objective point of their walk, and this thought added to the disquietude he already felt at the sight of Barclay, for when people went into parks they sat on benches and talked, sometimes for hours.
He was close at their heels before they heard his hail and turned. A momentary expression of annoyance, gone almost as soon as it came, passed over Barclay’s face. June looked confused and, for the first instant, the Colonel saw, did not know what to say.
“Well,” he said, trying to speak with genial unconsciousness, “what are you doing up here so far from your native haunts?”
“I met Miss Allen on the avenue just below there,” said Jerry quickly, “walking up this way to make a call on some friends of hers.”
He spoke with glib ease, but his eye, which lighted for an instant on June’s, was imperious with a command. June was taken aback by his smooth readiness. She did not like what he said, but she obeyed the commanding eye and answered with stammering reluctance:
“Yes, the Nesbits. I was going there this afternoon. They’re just a block beyond here.”
It was not exactly a lie, June thought, for had Barclay not appeared she would doubtless have gone to the Nesbits, wondering all the time what had happened to him. But Barclay had appeared, as he always did now at the time and place he so carelessly yet so scrupulously designated, and June would not have seen the Nesbits that afternoon.
“Suppose you take a little pasear with me instead of going to the Nesbits,” said the Colonel. “I’m not conceited, but I think I’m just as interesting as they are.”
“And what are you doing up here?” she said, her presence of mind, and with it her natural gaiety of manner, returning. “You’re as far from your native haunts as I am.”
“I was calling, too,” he answered, “on the Barkers. But I didn’t meet any one sufficiently interesting to keep me from fulfilling my duties, and I have seen the new house from the skylight to the coal-bin.”