"I was mistaken in you," he chuckled. "You're a rank impressionist. Indeed, you're a neo-impressionist, a get-busy-and-do-it-now master of art.... But she's a mighty nice girl, isn't she?"
"Meaning Miss Manning?" said Trenholme coldly.
"No. Eliza."
"Sorry. I misunderstood."
"'Cré nom! You've got it bad."
"Got what bad?"
"The matrimonial measles. You're sickening for them now. One of the worst symptoms in the man is his curt refusal to permit anybody else to admire one bright particular star of womanhood. If the girl hears another girl gushing over the young man, she's ready to scratch her eyes out. By Jove! It'll be many a day before you forget your visit to Roxton Park this morning, or yesterday morning, or whenever it was.
"I'm mixed. Life has been very strenuous during the past fifteen hours. If you love me, James, put my poor head under a pump, or I'll be dreaming that our lightning sketch performer here, long John Trenholme, late candidate for the P. R. A., but now devoted to the cult of Hymen, is going to marry Eliza, of the White Horse, and that the fair Sylvia is pledged to cook us a dinner tomorrow night—or is it tonight? Oh, Gemini, how my head aches!"
"Don't mind a word he's saying, Mr. Trenholme," put in Winter. "Hilton Fenley hit him a smack with that rifle, and it developed certain cracks already well marked. But he's a marvelously 'cute little codger when you make due allowance for his peculiar ways, and he has a queer trick of guessing at future events with an accuracy which has surprised me more times than I can keep track of."
Trenholme was too good a fellow not to put up with a little mild chaff of that sort. He looked at the horizon, where the faint streaks of another dawn were beginning to show in the northeast.