“Hello, everybody,” he called to them. “Get tired of waiting?”
“Oh, Jim! you were simply wonderful,” said Clara, turning sparkling eyes upon him. “You ought to have heard what people were saying all around us.”
“Perhaps it’s jolly good he didn’t,” broke in Reggie, with a twinkle in the eye behind the monocle. “Might have swelled the old bean, you know, completely ruined him, what?”
“He’s frightfully spoiled already,” said Clara, with a distracting, sidewise glance at Jim. “You’ve no idea how conceited he is.”
“On the contrary,” replied Jim, stretching his long length contentedly in one of the hard-backed seats, “the only time I’m tempted to be conceited, my dear, is when I realize that I have you.”
“Don’t mind us, Jim,” chuckled Mabel delightedly, and Reggie added benevolently:
“Bless you, my children. Mabel and I are looking steadily in the opposite direction. But perhaps, on further reflection, you would enjoy our absence greater than our presence? What say, Mabel, shall we stroll on?”
“You’re all so silly!” Clara protested, her face flaming. “I wish you wouldn’t talk such nonsense, Jim—in public, anyway.”
“I won’t until next time,” promised Jim, then, thinking it about time he changed the subject, he asked what they had been talking about so animatedly when he approached. “You seemed all heated up about something,” he added.