"Do, that's a dear. And I shall tell Mrs. Haight that old Mac always goes shooting with you. I am sure that he does. Good-bye. I'll see about the hall this afternoon."
She drove off with lifted reins and a little flourish of her whip, and Isabel went into the house and telephoned first to Gwynne, who had installed a private wire between his house and hers, and then to Miss Boutts. At two o'clock she drew rein before a large brown shingle house on the highest point of Rosewater. Mr. Boutts had begun life in one of the little old peaked cottages down by the central square; later he had built an "artistic" cottage, and then a "residence"; symbolizing his increase not only by the more pretentious structures but by mounting the hill; the second cottage had been half-way up, the residence was on its apex, and could be seen by the envious traveller on boat and train. There was nothing left before him now but San Francisco or a balloon; heaven being out of the question.
Miss Boutts awaited the buggy, in the tiny porch, and had obeyed Isabel's behest to look her prettiest. She wore a large red hat covered with feathers shading into pink, and a claret-colored frock that fitted her superb figure in a fashion that caused Isabel to draw her brows together and suggest a dust-coat.
"It is too sweet of you," said Miss Boutts, as she sprang into the buggy. "I feel so flattered when you take any notice of insignificant little me. Do tell me where we are going and why you told me to look my prettiest!"
"I must go out to Lumalitas to consult certain farmer's books in my cousin's library, and I thought it only fair to provide him with entertainment while I am busy. It seems the gossips do not approve of my going out there alone, and as I was obliged to go I did not think it worth while to make a martyr of Mr. Gwynne."
Miss Boutts blushed and tossed her head. "He called on me and sent me flowers," she said, in innocent triumph. "I was so sorry to miss him. All the girls are fearfully jealous."
"Do you like him?" asked Isabel, absently.
"Well—a little. He is new, and English, and different. There's not much to choose from here, and I don't know any of the swells in San Francisco. I can't say he is my ideal—that has always been an immensely tall man with big blue eyes and a tawny moustache; and Mr. Gwynne is just a sort of blond, no color in his hair at all, and I never did care much for gray eyes. He's tall enough, and the girls think him 'distinguished,' but nobody could call him big. Besides, he doesn't know how to say sweet things one little bit. I went out on the veranda with him at your party, and it was a heavenly night, and all he asked me was if I wasn't afraid of catching cold, and then he wandered on about American girls exposing themselves foolishly and wearing too thin shoes and eating too many sweets. Fancy a man talking like that to a girl at night on a veranda! I never felt so flat."
Isabel glanced curiously at the beautiful empty creature. Her black eyes looked like wells of sentiment, and her body a mould for a new race of men.
"Tell me," she exclaimed, impulsively. "What do you expect a man to do under such circumstances—to—a—kiss you?" She brought out the last with some effort, her old-fashioned training suddenly suggesting that she could better understand the downfall of the girl she had befriended in Paris than the vulgarities of the shallow.