“You really feel that I have earned a professional's fee?”
“Beyond a doubt.”
She stood a moment gazing thoughtfully down at the tip of her little toe, struggling to be quite cool and collected in the knowledge that she was about to do a daring, almost a brazen thing—wondering with a queer, panicky little fluttering of her heart if he would think any the less of her for it.
“Well—I—that is——”
“The cauliflower ear is not unknown among pugilists in our own dear native land, but the cauliflower tongue appears to blossom exclusively in Sobrante,” he suggested wickedly.
She bit her lips to repress a smile. “Since you have taken Billy away from me this evening, I shall make you take Billy's place this evening. After dinner you shall hire an open victoria with two little white horses and drive me around the Malecon. There is a band concert to-night.”
“If it's the last act of my wicked life!” he promised fervently. Strange to relate, in that ecstatic moment no thought of Billy Geary marred the perfect serenity of what promised to be the most perfectly serene night in history.