"You haven't met her?"
"Not yet."
"Oh, you'd like her immensely."
The words were uttered with such naive confidence that Harry Spencer turned away his gaze from the new attraction to survey the old.
"How do you know?" he inquired jauntily.
Peggy spluttered a little at this flank attack. "Oh, well, you know, she's so awfully clever. She's different. She'd pique your curiosity anyway," she concluded, recovering her aplomb.
"Am I so difficult to please?" he asked sententiously. He answered the question himself. "Yes, I admit that I am." His look of admiration, which Peggy divined was constitutional with him on such occasions, was best to be met by diversion.
"I shall never be able to play golf as Lydia Maxwell does, and I've been at it twice as long. She has only played this spring, and Dobson says that she has a better idea of the game than any other woman. It's just knack with her, for her balls go farther than mine and yet she makes scarcely an exertion. You couldn't help admire her in all sorts of ways. It has been a dreadfully quiet season for her, though, for when her baby was six weeks old and she had sent out cards for two musical parties in their new town house, her husband's mother, old Mrs. Maxwell, died suddenly, and she had to go into mourning. So they went to Southern California for February and March, and moved down here as soon as they returned. She took lessons in golf at Los Angeles, and she beat me four up the first time we played, even though I supposed I could give her half a stroke."
While he listened to this monologue, Spencer followed the progress of the subject of it. She was playing with pretty Mrs. Baxter, but, though her opponent was an ordinarily graceful woman, there was a deft harmony in her movements which made Mrs. Baxter appear an unfinished person by comparison.
"They say the real secret is that she has an artistic temperament." The speech was Peggy's by way of reading his thoughts and providing a condensed and comprehensive key.