“Well, I almost hit it,” defended Jack. “Pearls are related to fishes, and fish lines are—”
“Oh, get a map!” groaned Ed. “Do you always have to make diagrams of your jokes that way, old man?”
“Let’s go outside,” proposed Cora. “I’m sure it’s getting stuffy in here—”
“Well, I like that!” cried Belle. “After she asked us to come, she calls us stuffy! Cora Kimball!”
“Oh, I didn’t mean it that way at all,” protested the young hostess. “But it is close and sultry. I shouldn’t wonder but what we’d have a thunder-shower.”
“Don’t say that!” pleaded Jack, in what Walter termed his theatrical voice. “A shower means water, and Belle and water—”
“Stop it!” commanded the pestered one. “Do come out,” and she linked her arm in that of Cora. “Maybe we can talk sense if we get in the open.”
The young people drifted from the room, out on the broad porch and thence down under the cedars that lined the path. It was late afternoon, and though the sky was clouding over, there shot through the masses now and then a shaft of sun that fell on the walk between the tree branches, bringing into relief the figures that “crunched” their way along the gravel, talking rapidly the while.
“Looks like a rare old reunion,” spoke Jack. “I guess we’ll do something worth while after all.”
“Don’t distress yourself too much, old man,” warned Ed. “You might get a sun-stroke, you know.”