"You?" He favoured her with the full measure of his supreme impudence as he looked her over. "You're just built to play the queen's part in a tragedy show on Broadway. After the first night there'd be just one theatre doing business."
She frowned quickly, her eyes darkening as they had when she struck with her whip at her tired horse. Then she shrugged her shoulders and laughed again.
"You're very flattering," she said in a way which made Dart look at her sharply and which for a very brief time left him a little uncertain.
"Me?" he said. "You wrong me, lady. Honest you do. I'm sired by a gentleman who was a Baptist minister and who instilled in his only son if you lie once you'll do it some more and then you'll get caught. Say, seeing Wanda ain't here to do the knockdown stunt, I'm Dart, Mr. Willie Dart, to command."
He bobbed her a bow, accompanied the ceremony with a little flap of the coat tails, and all the while did not shift his round, inquisitive eyes from her face.
"Being acquainted now," he went on when a little pause assured him that she was not going to respond with an exchange of names, "just make yourself to home, won't you? I'll duck in and tell Wanda you're here. And," merely as an afterthought, "what name will I say, lady?"
"Don't bother," she replied coolly. "She knows I'm here."
"Does she? She hasn't been expecting you, has she?"
"No." Miss Hazleton's interest in the little man had evidently died a sudden death, and her one concern now seemed to get herself warm and dry.
"She's one great little kid, Wanda is, ain't she?" he ran on, totally unaffected by the significance of the young woman's back whose graceful curves were not lost to his admiring eyes.