"Best thing she could do. After the stuff she undoubtedly got away with at midnight her only salvation's a light breakfast. As to her colour, I enriched it," he explained grimly, "by mentioning my feeling about Ridge. If I thought, after all the attentions that girl has had, that she'd take Ridge Jordan—with all his money! Dot's no girl to care such a lot about money. It's this crazy bridal-party business that's upset her, I'll go you! The thing's contagious. Lord Harry! I don't know that I could look long at Irene and Harold myself without getting a touch of it."
"A touch! You and Sally?" Mrs. Jack smiled.
"Oh, well; that's different." Her brother thrust his hands into his pockets and walked over to the window. "Entirely different. Sally and I were intended for each other from the beginning; everybody knows that. But now—what in thunder am I going to do with Waldron? Tell me that. I've got him to come down here expressly to meet Dot. Of course I didn't tell him so; he's not that sort. And now she's off for all to-morrow with that confounded bridal party."
"Can't he come some other time?"
"I should say not; certainly not for months. He's off to South America for a long stay—has this one day to himself. You see it wasn't till I met him yesterday that I realized what the fellow had become; and then it came over me all at once what it might mean to have him meet Dot just now. I'm no matchmaker—"
"I should say that is just what you are!"
"No; but—'There is a tide,' you know. And Dot certainly has me worried to death over Ridge Jordan."
"But, Julius"—Mrs. Jack's voice took on a tinge of anxiety—"we've always thought well of Ridge. I don't just see—"
"I know you don't. He's not the man for Dot. I want a real man for her.
I've got him. Wait till you see Kirke!"
"You seem to think it's very simple—"