“I guess I’m a pretty good excuse, Miss Campbell,” he said. “But don’t tease the lad. He blushes too easily.”
“And Charlie came to see you, too, I suppose?” pursued Miss Campbell, glancing at the other boy who was at that moment engaged in an earnest and interested conversation with Mary Price.
“Let’s go back and get into our every-days and take a ride in the Comet,” suggested Billie. “We can all squeeze in just as we used to do.”
As the notion seemed agreeable, they parted company for a time, while the ladies fled by a side door into the hotel. And you may be sure they were not as long in “dressing down” for old friends as they were in dressing up for foreign lords. It was not many minutes before they crowded into the red motor which Edward Paxton had brought around from the garage.
“Why, hello,” exclaimed Percy, noticing the young chauffeur at once. “I’m awfully glad to see you again, but I thought you were gone to New York. You must have changed your mind in a hurry to have beat us down.”
“You have made a mistake,” said Edward stiffly. “I never saw you before.”
“Curious,” said Percy, “but you are enough like a fellow we met on the way down to be his twin brother.”
“Was he alone?” demanded Billie.
“He seemed to be, but why?”
“Oh, nothing,” she replied, jumping into the car with the others.