She sprang up brightly, advancing with outstretched hand.
"Oh, you're Bojo," she said in correction. "You don't know me. I'm Patsie, the terror of the family. Now don't say you thought I was a child, I'm seventeen—going on eighteen in January."
He shook the hand that was thrust out to him in a direct boyish grip, surprised and a little bewildered at the irresistible youth and spirits of the young lady who stood so naturally before him in short skirt and in simple shirtwaist open at the tanned neck.
"Of course they've told you I'm a terror," she said defiantly. He nodded, which seemed to please her, for she rattled on: "Well, I am. They had to keep me away until Dolly hooked the Duke. Have you seen him? Well, if that's a duke all I've got to say is I think he's a mutt. Of course you're waiting for Doris, aren't you?"
The assumption of his vassalage somehow stirred a little antagonism, but before he could answer she was off again.
"Well, a jolly long wait you'll have, too. Doris is splashing around among the rouge and powder like Romp in a puddle."
Her own cheeks needed no such encouragement, he thought, laughing back at her through the pure infection of her high spirits.
"I like you; you're all right," she said, surveying him with her head on one side like Romp, the terrier, who came sniffing up to him in the friendliest way. "You're not like a lot of these fashion plates that come in on tiptoes. Say, that was a bully tackle you made in that Harvard game."
He was down on one knee rubbing the shaggy coat of the terrier. He looked up.