"I came down to get some things for to-morrow—Teddy needs a straw hat, if we're really going to Coney"—Martie found his steady look a little confusing. "You like my pongee, and my four-dollar hat?" she said.
"I think you're PERFECTLY—GORGEOUS!" he answered intensely. "To have you come in here like this!—I had no idea of it! Brewer simply came and said 'a lady'—I thought it was that woman from the hotel. I'll never forget the instant my eyes fell upon you, standing there by old Pitcher. It—honestly, Martie, it seemed to me like a burst of sunshine!"
"Why—you goose!" she said, a little shaken. The circumstance of their being here, in this exquisite semblance of domestic comfort, the sweet summer day, the new flowery hat and cool pongee gown, combined to stir her blood. She forgot everything but that she was young, and that it was strangely thrilling to have this man, so ardent and so forceful, standing close beside her.
It was almost with a sense of relief, a second later, that she realized that other groups were drifting through the little apartment, that she and John were not alone. She remembered, with a strange, poignant contraction of her heart, the expression in his eyes as they met, the authoritative finger with which he had touched the elevator bell.
John spoke appreciatively of her visit that night at the table; Adele said that Martie had told her of it.
"I was going down town with her," said Adele, playing idly with knife and fork. "But I got started on that disgusting centrepiece again, and Ethel came in, and we just sewed. I'm so sick of the thing now I told Miriam I was going to give it to her and let her finish it herself—I'll have to go down town Monday and match the silk anyway; it's too maddening, for there's just that one leaf to do, but I might as well keep AT it, and get RID of it! If we go to Coney to-morrow I believe I'll take it along, and go on with it; I suppose it would look funny, but I don't know why not. Ethel went to Coney last week with the Youngers in their auto; she said it was a perfect scream all the way; Tom WOULD pass everything on the road, and she said it was a scream! She says Mrs. Younger talks about herself and her house and her servants all the time, and she wouldn't get out of the car, so it wasn't much fun. I asked her why she wouldn't get out of the car, and she said her complexion. I didn't see anything so remarkable about it myself; anyway, if you rub plenty of cream in—I'm going to do that to-morrow, Martie, and you ought to!—and then wear a veil, I don't mean too heavy a veil, but just to keep your hat tight, why, you don't burn!"
"Both you girls come down town Monday, and I'll show you a rug worth fifty thousand dollars," suggested John.
"Oh, thank you, dear!" Adele said in bright protest. "But if you knew what I've got to do Monday! I'm going to have my linen fitted, and I'm going in to see the doctor about that funny, giddy feeling I've had twice. And Miriam wants me to look at hats with her. I'll be simply dead. Miriam and I will get a bite somewhere; we're dying to try the fifty-cent lunch at Shaftner's; they say it isn't so bad. It'll be an awful day, to say nothing of being all tired out from Coney. But I suppose I'll have to get through it."
She smiled resignedly at Martie. But Martie had fallen suddenly into absent thought. She was thinking of the odd look on John's face as he came forward in the pleasant dimness and coolness of the big store.
The next day they went duly to Coney Island; their last trip together, as it chanced, and one of the most successful of their many days in the parks or on the beaches. John, Martie, and Teddy were equally filled with childish enthusiasm for the prospect, and perhaps Adele liked as well her role of amused elder.