“That’s the nicest thing I’ve heard to-day! Please come soon.”
“Thank you, Nan; I shall certainly do that.”
“I met a friend of yours a while ago,” she said, “who pronounced you the greatest living man.”
“Ah! A gentleman, of course; I identify him at once; he’s the only person alive I fool to that extent—Jeremiah A. Amidon! I can’t imagine why he hasn’t mentioned his acquaintance with you. I shall chide him for this.”
He viewed her in his quizzical fashion through the thick-lensed spectacles he used for golfing. In his ordinary occupations these gave place to eyeglasses that twinkled with a sharp, hard brightness, as though bent upon obscuring the kindness that lay behind them.
“I hadn’t seen him lately—not since I was a child. We used to be neighbors when we were children, and he was a very, very naughty boy.”
“I dare say he was,” Eaton remarked, with his air of thinking of something else. “I suppose you didn’t find him at all backward in bringing himself to your notice. Shyness isn’t his dominant trait.”
“On the other hand, he was rather diffident and wholly polite. I thought his manners did you credit—for he said you had been coaching him.”
“He must be chidden; his use of my name in that connection is utterly unwarranted. He was one of Mrs. Kinney’s party, I suppose,—very interesting. I’m glad they have taken him up!”
He was watching, with the quick eagerness that made him so disconcerting a companion, the passing of a motor toward the clubhouse, but she understood perfectly that this utterance had been with ironic intent. She laughed softly.