"You had better listen to him instead. Larry is apt to be right and you are apt to be wrong, and you know it."
"Maybe it is because I do know it and because he is so devilish right that I damn him," observed the youngest Holiday sagely, his eyes meeting his uncle's over his sister's head.
It wasn't until he had danced and flirted and made merry for three consecutive hours at the hop, and proposed in the exuberance of his mood to at least three different charmers whose names he had forgotten by the next day, that Ted Holiday remembered Madeline and his promise to keep tryst with her that afternoon. Other things of more moment had swept her clean from his mind.
"Thunder!" he muttered to himself. "Wonder what she is thinking when I swore by all that was holy to come. Oh well; I should worry. I couldn't help it. I'll write and explain how it happened."
So said, so done. He scribbled off a hasty note of explanation and apology which he signed "Yours devotedly, Ted Holiday" and went out to the corner mail box to dispatch the same so it would go out in the early morning collection, and prepared to dismiss the matter from his mind again.
Coming back into his room he found his uncle standing on the threshold.
"Had to get a letter off," murmured the young man as his uncle looked inquiring. He turned to light a cigarette with an air of determined casualness. He didn't care to have Uncle Phil know any more about the Madeline affair.
"It must have been important."
"Was," curtly. "Did you think I was joy riding again?"
"No, I heard you stirring and thought you might be sick. I haven't been able to get to sleep myself."