"Miss Jamison, I must speak to you for a few moments. Will you meet me in an hour under the big linden tree in the park where Freia and Gretchen tell me you are in the habit of playing with them? I am sorry to trouble you but I have what seems to me an important reason for wishing to talk to you."
In return, after studying the young officer's face for a moment with her large grey eyes, Nora Jamison quietly acquiesced. The next instant she disappeared inside the Liedermann house, the door being opened for her almost instantly by Frau Liedermann herself.
It was possible that the German lady may have observed their brief conversation, yet Jimmie Hersey had no suspicion of Frau Liedermann, who struck him as being an outsider in the family of her husband.
An hour later, when Major Hersey sought the place he had chosen for their appointment, he discovered Nora Jamison was there before him.
She was sitting on a small bench under a great tree filled with tiny flowering blossoms which scented the air with a delicious fragrance.
Evidently she was thinking deeply.
Nora Jamison's exceptional appearance did not attract the young officer, although she did interest and puzzle him.
Her short hair, her slender, almost boyish figure, the queer elfin look in her face, which made one wonder what she was really thinking even at the time she was talking in a perfectly natural fashion, had a tantalizing rather than a pleasant effect upon some persons.
Yet once seated beside her Major Jimmie felt less embarrassment than he had anticipated. One had to believe in any human being for whom children cared as they did for this American girl.
"Freia and Gretchen talk about you always," he began a little awkwardly. "I thought at the beginning of our acquaintance that I was to be their favored friend, but soon found you had completely won their allegiance. But where is your usual companion, the little French girl?"