"Were you?" he said, smiling. "Our thoughts were half-way the same then, for I was wishing to see her, too."
She thought how pleasant and soft his voice was, and she tried to modify the tones of her own.
"I was goin't' ask you—her—what to do about—about something," she said, falteringly.
"So was I," he smiled back, showing his perfect teeth. "She will have to be very, very wise to advise us both, will she not? Shall we go to her now? And together? Perhaps our united wisdom may solve both your problem and mine. Three people ought to be three times as wise as one, oughtn't they?"
XIII.
When Gertrude came forward to meet Selden Avery and Francis King, she felt the disapproving eyes of her father fixed upon her. It was a new and a painful sensation. It made her greeting less free and frank than usual, and both Avery and Francis felt without being able to analyze it.
"She don't like me to be with him," thought Francis, and felt humiliated and hurt.
"Surely Gertrude cannot doubt me," was Avery's mental comment, and a sore spot in his heart, left by a comment made at the club touching Gertrude's friendship for this same tall, fiery girl at his side, made itself felt again. John Martin exchanged glances with Gertrude's father. Avery saw, and seeing, resented what he believed to be its meaning.
The three men bowed rather stiffly to each other. Francis felt that she was, somehow, to blame. She wished that she had not come. She longed to go, but did not know what to say nor how to start. The situation was awkward for all. Gertrude wished for and yet dreaded the entrance of her mother.