“I think you have hit upon the one reason that made me think of declining the Holden offer,” he was thinking hard and did not seem to have heard her question. “I’m lazy, I suppose; I hate to make changes. Holden would mean boarding and no real home. It would mean giving up a mighty pleasant work here and a lot of good fellows,” looking about the table.
Her question seemed to come slowly to the front of his mind. He would have made some sort of rejoinder, but she was at the moment scolding Morris, who was pretending to eat ice cream from a knife.
They were rising and breaking up before she spoke to him again.
“Don’t forget, mon capitaine,” she plucked his sleeve. “You are to stay after the others.”
“Oh, yes,” his face lighted up. “Count on me.... It will be like old times.”
“How frightfully time flies,” she reverted suddenly to a burlesque of the bored lady-out-to-dinner. “Why it seems only yestehdee that we wuh children togetheh.”
Like a belated jest he began to see through her strange airs. “I’ve been frightfully stupid tonight,” he admitted. “Some of your fooling was too delicate for me; it got completely by—”
“I’m simply living up to my gown, sir,—in spots.”
His rather old-young face looked its honest admiration.
“What’s that thing-em-bob on your—oh! Do you belong to a sorority? Why, bless my soul! It’s a fraternity pin—eh? remade into a brooch.... Whose is it?”