“And I won’t press you,” said Mrs. Wells, her fine face lighting up wonderfully, “to make up any more ingenious stories of how two young people off on a lark manage to call each other by their first names.”
Richard laughed. “It was embarrassing,” he admitted. “One drops into first names, sometimes, you know—uh—so easily and—uh—the explanation is deuced hard to make—uh—in public.”
“I’m an old woman——”
“Oh, tut, tut; not at all.”
“But I am not so old that I can’t understand young folks. And anyway, young man, you are not built to lie—your ears give you away.”
Geraldine broke forth in sudden merriment.
“Oh, see here!” Richard expostulated. “See here!” The large lobes of his ears were burning. “You’ll get me all fussed up if you draw attention——”
“The whole ear”—Geraldine spoke a word or two between attempts to suppress her glee—“is crimson—and now—the back of your neck is on fire!”
In the joyfulness of the moment Walter slipped carefully from his chair and sauntered off; but he had not gone far before Mrs. Wells’ watchful mind—the subliminal, probably—had noted his absence. Without a word she rose and trailed the boy. At the top of the stairs he looked back, turned about sullenly and waited for her.
“How did I do?” Richard asked earnestly, the moment they were alone. He was as eager as a boy. Although Geraldine was a strikingly handsome young woman Richard paid no attention to that. In her presence he was like a near-sighted man intent on his own ideas. Just now he was openly delighted with his own cleverness and appealed to her as co-conspirator to give him full credit.