"I'm afraid I don't catch the distinction," said the young man a little drily. Bitter is the cup of the unappreciated joker.
"I mean—I—I——" quavered Muriel miserably. "Maybe it's because I'm not used to your fun—I don't see things—it's always really funny at home—so different from here—so much easier. But—I—I think you're too—too nice to wear a kilt!"
The tears came into her eyes; tears of embarrassment and perhaps some deeper unanalysed feeling. Amazement encompassed J. B. What on earth was the matter with her? It was not possible she thought the kilt indecent!
"And—and that little red apple on the corner of your head!" faltered Muriel. "It all makes you look so foolish—not at all funny. And you're not foolish—really and truly not the least bit foolish—and I think it's a shame for you to make yourself look so!"
At the moment J. B. looked exceedingly foolish. Her interest was gratifying, of course; there was something almost maternally sweet in it. But it put him, as he phrased it to himself, in an awful box.
"You—you're not vexed, are you?" said Muriel, holding her chin steady by an effort. The young man glanced at her, and surprised an expression that caused him to look away, crimsoning. The next instant he inwardly cursed himself savagely for a despicable cad. Couldn't a nice girl look at him without his imagining——!
"Oh, I wouldn't get mad about a little thing like that, Miss Baxter," he said heartily. "I'm feeling pretty stuck-up about your—your speaking of it at all, you know. Of course, it is a Tom-fool costume, but I've let myself in for it now, and I can't very well back out, and leave them without anybody at the last minute. And I won't look any sillier than the others—not so silly as Ted for instance, in women's clothes."
"Oh, he doesn't make any difference!" said Muriel, almost with impatience.
"Well, he thinks he's pretty important, anyway," J. B. said, wondering privately what they would have done without the comparatively safe and conservative ground of Teddy Johns' character and abilities for a retreat, when the conversational horizon grew overcast. "In the second play especially—making away with peoples' diamond coronets and things! Mrs. Pallinder's going to let us have all hers. She's got some sparklers, you know, regular headlights; you've seen her wear them? Tell you, if I were in Ted's place, I wouldn't want to have 'em in my charge, even for a few minutes—and it's all through the last two acts—until the place where they drag him out from behind the screen, after I'm supposed to shoot him, remember?"
"Yes, where you say: 'Don't put the handcuffs on a dead man, men!'"