“A wager? H-m! Possibly.” She paused suddenly. “There’s the bell.”
A moment later James Tarrisford Abbott, in the most immaculate of dinner clothes, entered and greeted his aunt, halting with a slight frown as he encountered the beaming face of the young man who fell upon him.
“Good boy, Jimmie! You made it, after all!”
“With a few hours to spare.” Jim darted a questioning glance at his aunt, and seemed relieved at her emphatic shake of the head.
“I knew we’d lost when Mrs. Abbott told me that you had telephoned to her from just a little way out of town to-day,” Jack Trimble responded. “I ran over on my way to the 140club to give her a message from my mother. Did you have a hard time of it, old man?”
“Hard?” Jim smiled. “I’ve been a rough-rider in a circus─”
Mrs. Abbott groaned, but Jack Trimble’s eyes opened as roundly and wide as his mouth.
“Thundering–So it was you after all!”
“Me?” Jim demanded with ungrammatical haste.
“You–rough-rider–circus!” Jack exclaimed. “Vera said the chap looked like you, but it never occurred to me that it could possibly be!”