"Where are the Clydesdales?"
"I believe they're stopping with the Hammertons for a week or two—I really don't know. You can ask them, as they'll be here to dinner."
Cairns laid aside a cue with which he had been punching pool-balls; Van Alstyne unhooked his skate-bag, and the others followed his example in silence. Nobody said anything further about the Clydesdales to Desboro.
Out in the hall a gay group of young girls in their skating skirts were gathering, among them Jacqueline, now under the spell of happiness in their companionship.
Truly, even in these few days, the "warm sunlight of approval" had done wonders for her. She had blossomed out deliriously and exquisitely in her half-shy friendships with these young girls, responding diffidently at first to their overtures, then frankly and with a charming self-possession based on the confidence that she was really quite all right if everybody only thought so.
Everybody seemed to think so; Athalie Vannis's friendship for her verged on the sentimental, for the young girl was enraptured at the idea that Jacqueline actually earned her own living. Marie Ledyard lazily admired and envied her slight but exceedingly fashionable figure; Helsa Steyr passionately adored her; Katharine Frere was profoundly impressed by her intellectual attainments; Betty Barkley saw in her a social success, with Aunt Hannah to pilot her—that is, every opportunity for wealth or position, or even both, through the marriage to which, Betty cheerfully conceded, her beauty entitled her.
So everybody of her own sex was exceedingly nice to her; and the men already were only too anxious to be. And what more could a young girl want?
As the jolly party started out across the snow, in random and chattering groups made up by hazard, Jacqueline turned from Captain Herrendene, with whom she found herself walking, and looked back at Desboro, who had remained standing bareheaded on the steps.
"Aren't you coming?" she called out to him, in her clear young voice.
He shook his head, smiling.