“I don’t see why our mother needs to rusticate for three months in this stupid place. If we could have a house party, of course, that would help to make it endurable for me, but in her last letter Ma Mere distinctly said that we were to invite no one, as her nerves were in need of absolute quiet.”
The boy, who had folded his arms looked at his sister penetratingly, almost critically. Suddenly he blurted out:
“Do you know, Gwynette, sometimes I think you do not care, really care, deep in your heart for our mother as much as I do. In fact, I sometimes wonder if you care for anyone except yourself.”
The girl flushed angrily. “Your dinner conversation is most ungracious, I am sure,” she flung at him, but paused and looked at a young man also in uniform, who was hurrying toward their table with an undeniably pleased expression on his tanned face. Harold rose and held out his hand, glad of any interruption.
“Well, Tod, where did you drop from?” Then to the girl he said: “Sister Gwynette, this is a chap from the same San Francisco prison in which I am incarcerated—Lieutenant James Creery by name.”
The girl held up a slim, white hand over which the youth bent with an ardor which had won for him the heart of many a young lady in the past and probably would in the future, but in the present he was welcomed as a much-needed diversion from a most upsetting family quarrel. Having accepted their invitation to make a third at the small table, apart from the others, the young man seated himself, saying to the girl: “Don’t let me interrupt any confidences you two were having. I know you don’t see each other often, since we poor chaps have but one free Sunday a month.”
Gwynette smiled her prettiest and even her brother conceded that if Gwyn would only take the trouble to smile now and then she might be called handsome.
“Our conversation was neither deep nor interesting to anyone but me. I was wishing that we were to spend the summer—well, anywhere rather than in our country home four miles out of this stupid town.”
“Stupid?” the young man, nicknamed Tod, glanced about at the charmingly gowned young women at the small tables near them. “This crowd ought to keep things stirring.”
Gwynette shook her head. “Nothing but weekend guests motored up from Los Angeles or down from San Francisco. From Monday to Friday the place is dead.”