Harrigan eyed his own spotless flannels and compared them with the other’s. What was good enough for the son of a millionaire was certainly good enough for him. Besides, it would be a bully good joke on Nora and Molly.
“You’re on!” he cried. Here was a lark. He turned the dog and the purchases over to the proprietor, who promised that they should arrive instantly at the villa.
Then the two men sought the quay to engage a boat. They walked shoulder to shoulder, flat-backed, with supple swinging limbs, tanned faces and clear animated eyes. Perhaps Harrigan was ten or fifteen pounds heavier, but the difference would have been noticeable only upon the scales.
“Padre, my shoe pinches,” said Nora with a pucker between her eyes.
“My child,” replied the padre, “never carry your vanity into a shoemaker’s shop. The happiest man is he who walks in loose shoes.”
“If they are his own, and not inherited,” quickly.
The padre laughed quietly. He was very fond of this new-found daughter of his. Her spontaneity, her blooming beauty, her careless observation of convention, her independence, had captivated him. Sometimes he believed that he thoroughly understood her, when all at once he would find himself mentally peering into some dark corner into which the penetrating light of his usually swift deduction could throw no glimmer. She possessed the sins of the butterfly and the latent possibilities of a Judith. She was the most interesting feminine problem he had in his long years encountered. The mother mildly amused him, for he could discern the character that she was sedulously striving to batten down beneath inane social usages and formalities. Some day she would revert to the original type, and then he would be glad to renew the acquaintance. In rather a shamefaced way (a sensation he could not quite analyze) he loved the father. The pugilist will always embarrass the scholar and excite a negligible envy; for physical perfection is the most envied of all nature’s gifts. The padre was short, thickset, and inclined toward stoutness in the region of the middle button of his cassock. But he was active enough for all purposes.
“I have had many wicked thoughts lately,” resumed Nora, turning her gaze away from the tennis players. She and the padre were sitting on the lower steps of the veranda. The others were loitering by the nets.
“The old plaint disturbs you?”