“A soldier with him! What soldier? Could it be Lewis?” she asked herself.
It was Lewis Somerville, looking very handsome and upstanding indeed in his khaki uniform, with his face burned a deep bronze so that his eyes looked very blue and his teeth very white. He clambered out over the great basket of fruit Dr. Wright was bringing to Mrs. Carter, dropped the boxes and parcels piled in around him and hugged and kissed all the female cousins in sight, Helen, Nan and Lucy. He shook Bobby by the hand, knowing full well that that youngster would sooner die than be hugged and kissed.
“Douglas, where is Douglas?” he whispered to Helen.
“In the dining-room! You can get there around at the back of the house—in the basement. We thought you were still in Mexico.”
Lewis did not wait to tell her that he wasn’t, but doing double quick time he streaked around the house, and finding the basement stairs without any trouble, he was down them in one stride.
“Douglas!”
“Oh, Lewis!”
Douglas forgot that not so very many months before this time she had informed her cousin that she was too big to be kissed and that he was not close enough kin to warrant indiscriminate hugging. Certainly she was no younger than she had been eight months before and Lewis was no closer kin, but now she submitted to his embraces and even clung to him for a moment.
It was so wonderful to have him back safe and sound. She could hardly believe it was only yesterday that she had sat on the roadside and wept. He was her same Lewis, too. She felt instinctively that the count’s suggestion in regard to Mexican beauties was ridiculous.