"Look at David!" rejoined Miss Elvira significantly.
Bab looked. In a corner across the drawing-room he sat, a figure of silence, nibbling his finger tips. A frown ruffled his brow; and though he was surrounded by half a dozen of the guests, young men and young women together, it was manifest that he was deaf to their laughter and talk. Miss Elvira gave Bab a swift, searching look.
"Have you two been up to anything?"
"I? David?"
"You two haven't had a tiff, have you?"
A tiff! Of course not! But Bab needed no second look at him to guess the cause of David's disquiet. She, too, felt that selfsame disturbance, that same tumult of the mind; but she, with a woman's art to aid her, had managed better to hide it. But now as Miss Elvira's eye, fishlike in its gloom, probed hers, Bab felt the color pour suddenly over her face and neck. A half-stifled "Humph!" escaped Miss Elvira, a mumble the significance of which was evident. Then, turning about abruptly, Miss Elvira resumed the task of greeting the last of the arrivals. That David should thus disclose his feelings, Bab saw, would never do. At the first opportunity, therefore, she hurried across the room. Bending swiftly over him, she touched him lightly on the shoulder.
"Spunk up!" whispered Bab. A flashing smile went with the words.
David, as it was evident, spunked up instantly. Bab returned to the other guests she had left. When again she looked across the room at him, he, too, was laughing and chatting, his mood now as exhilarant as hers. As her glance wandered away from him a pair of eyes encountered hers. Mrs. Lloyd stood gazing at her intently. Bab in spite of herself colored faintly.
Early that afternoon, long indeed before they'd been expected, the two Lloyds had motored in from their country place on Long Island. Evidently they had come in no little haste; and Lloyd, after a brief interview with David, had as hastily dashed off in the motor again. As for Mrs. Lloyd, almost at once she had retreated to her room, vouchsafing to Bab only a brief, not too exuberant greeting, a word or so purred indolently, as if with great effort. Bab by now owned to herself that she did not like the Lloyds. True, for David's sake she had tried to, but not even this had availed. Against the stone wall of their indifference she had only bruised herself.