"Jim!"
"Well, I know my sex," he said; "the cleverest of them are boobs in the hands of yours——"
"Jim! You are becoming horrid!"
"That means I'm becoming truthful. Hooray! I see Bill's happy finish." He picked up her soft little hand and kissed it. "Velvet and steel," he said—"the hand that rocks the world! Yes? No? Good-by, you little wretch! I'm going canoeing with my cousin Diana."
"Did you say that mother has that telegram?" she asked naïvely, sliding from the window-sill to the floor.
"Yes; and it's a mile long—a bally serial, Christine—to be continued this evening, I expect."
They clasped hands at the threshold; then she ran upstairs, and he sauntered out to the tennis court, where Diana still sat on her high perch knitting the silken tie, although below her the game had ended and the players had gone to the terrace for iced tea.
"Well, of all pretty monuments!" he exclaimed. "You have the other one on the Madison Square tower beaten to a froth!"
"Beware of my arrows," she said, smiling, as the wind blew her scarf into a silvery arc from her shoulders.
"Arrows? No, I'm wrong; you look like the Angel of the Central Park Fountain."