“Just busy, I guess,” said Betty, adding, as she answered her mother’s call from within the house: “He’s getting to be terribly popular, you know.”
Although Betty had denied that she had noticed any change in Allen, in her own heart she knew that she had, and wondered what could be the matter. She ate her dinner absently and hurried through her dessert—it was a good one, too, plum cake with hard sauce—so that she might “pretty” herself before Allen arrived.
As she brushed her dark curls into some semblance of order and regarded her flushed face in the mirror over her pretty dressing table, Betty reflected whimsically.
“And I was wondering,” she said, a little quirk at the corners of her mouth, “whether I should see him or not. It would really be better if I didn’t. It might teach him that he can’t stay away for a whole week without even ’phoning—” She paused and regarded her image thoughtfully.
Then, with a smile, she patted the last unruly lock of hair into place and went over to her closet to select the prettiest gown she had.
“And all the time,” she mused, “I knew I’d see him. I had to when he spoke in that tone. And he knew it too. Well,” with a sigh, “there isn’t any use worrying over it, I suppose.”
The dress she took from the hook was a fluffy organdie of that popular and becoming color known as “American beauty.” And when Betty slipped it over her dark head and stood once more before the mirror, the color of it miraculously matched the color in her cheeks. Betty—and the Little Captain was not at all conceited—was well satisfied with the effect.
Before she had quite finished putting the last touches to her pretty toilet she heard Allen talking and laughing with her father on the porch.
“It’s a wonder,” she thought, resentfully, “that he can spare any time at all from that old business of his. I wonder,” she added, inconsistently, “if he will like my dress.”
As a matter of fact, it is doubtful if Allen really saw the dress at all. For he was staring straight at Betty and no dress, however lovely, could compete with Betty’s face when she looked as she looked to-night.