“Bea? Bea Wilcox?”
“Yes,” he went on hurriedly. “It’s the fraternity pin. I’ve got to let the cat out of the bag, I suppose. It’s a dead secret yet. Bea and I have about agreed to—uh—make it up. Uh—you know what I mean. Been keeping it rather dark, of course. She hasn’t quite come over yet.... She doesn’t seem to understand about the ‘frat’ pin.... Thinks it means a lot of nonsense. I offered her another, but she won’t take it. Says a girl who wears a man’s ‘frat’ pin is as good as engaged to him, and all that sort of stuff. What I want to know is—oh, this is a rotten thing to have to say—what I thought was that you wouldn’t mind giving it back and sort o’ explain things to Bea. She got real nasty over it, flared up and—what’s the matter? By George! You are ill; aren’t you? Shan’t I send for somebody or something?”
Gorgas was on the settle, her face buried in her hands, and laughing hysterically. Gasps and volleys of laughter followed in quick succession.
“Oh, Neddie!” she cried, “you’ve played a cracker-jack joke on me. Oh! oh!” she breathed hard in the endeavor to recover. “You’ve given me—a—pain on the inside.... I thought—good heavens, will I ever get over this!” She sat up with an effort and dried her laughing eyes. “I thought all the time it was me you wanted! You looked so silly ... and ... mooney ... and I was ready to give you the mitten.... I think I was. You got me so flabbergasted and sentimental, I don’t know what I’d have done. It made me so sorry for you I was almost ready to cry ... and now....” she went off again. “I’ll get a bad cold from this,” she sniffed at a ball of handkerchief. “Oh, boy, I haven’t been so upset and turned about for a dog’s age.... And how in the name of scandal have you kept this affair so dark? I see Bea every other day and she hasn’t blinked an eyelash. The she-fox! I’ll have her scalp for this.”
Morris did not join in the merriment. He grinned occasionally, but it was a forced grimace. He was looking at Gorgas and making contrasts. Gorgas had always seemed just a good chum, but suddenly she seemed to have put on sex. To add to the humor, he tried clumsily to make excuses for not thinking of her in a more complimentary way. Bea was rather stormy and unreasonable. And Gorgas was growing more stunning every day. Doubts began to assail him.
“Don’t look at me that way, Ned,” she expostulated, still shaken by flurries of merriment. “That’s what fooled me lately. That moonstruck gaze! Oh! You should save them for Bea. No! On second thought you had better shoot them all at me.... Bea might change her mind.... Now! I feel better.”
She was touching her eyes quietly, and Morris was standing above her looking down thoughtfully, when Bardek poked a cautious head in the door. Seeing all quiet, he attempted to steal across the room to the corner where he kept a bludgeon of a stick, which he loved to carry with him on his walks.
Gorgas caught him in the act of skipping through the door.
“Come back here, you truant,” she called.
He looked in, smiling knowingly.