She hastened away, down the knoll and along the beach toward the hotel. Googoo followed her, turning occasionally to cast diabolical glances at the Speranza ankles. Albert gazed until the graceful figure in the trim sport costume disappeared behind the corner of the point of the beach. Just at the point she paused to wave to him. He waved in return. Then he tramped homeward. There was deep sand beneath his feet and, later, pine-needles and grass. They were all alike to him, for he was traveling on air.
That evening at supper his radiant appearance caused comment.
“What makes you look so happy, Albert?” asked his grandmother. “Seems to me I never saw you look so sort of—well, glorified, as you might say. What is the reason?”
The glorified one reddened and was confused. He stammered that he did not know, he was not aware of any particular reason.
Mrs. Ellis beamed upon him. “I presume likely his bookkeepin' at the office has been goin' pretty well lately,” she suggested.
Captain Zelote's gray eyes twinkled. “Cal'late he's been makin' up more poetry about girls,” was his offering. “Another one of those pieces about teeth like pearls and hair all curls, or somethin' like that. Say, Al, why don't you poetry-makin' fellers try a new one once in a while? Say, 'Her hair's like rope and her face has lost hope.' Eh? Why not, for a change?”
The protests on the part of Olive and the housekeeper against the captain's innovation in poetry-making had the effect of distracting attention from Albert's “glorified” appearance. The young man himself was thankful for the respite.
That night before he retired he took Madeline Fosdick's photograph from the back of the drawer among the ties and collars and looked at it for five minutes at least. She was a handsome girl, certainly. Not that that made any difference to him. And she was an intelligent girl; she understood his poetry and appreciated it. Yes, and she understood him, too, almost as well as Helen. . . . Helen! He hastily returned the Fosdick photograph to the drawer; but this time he did not put it quite so near the back.
On the following Saturday he was early at the knoll, a brand-new scribbling-pad in his pocket and in his mind divine gems which were later, and with Miss Fosdick's assistance, to be strung into a glittering necklace of lyric song and draped, with the stringer's compliments, about the throat of a grateful muse. But no gems were strung that day. Madeline did not put in an appearance, and by and by it began to rain, and Albert walked home, damp, dejected, and disgusted. When, a day or two later, he met Miss Fosdick at the post office and asked why she had not come he learned that her mother had insisted upon a motor trip to Wapatomac that afternoon.
“Besides,” she said, “you surely mustn't expect me EVERY Saturday.”