"Have you taken your medicine?"
"Certainly."
She glanced at the bottles. "Men are so horridly untruthful," she remarked to Valerie; "and this great, lumbering six-footer hasn't the sense of a baby—"
"I have, too!" roared John, indignantly; and Valerie laughed but Rita scarcely smiled.
"He's always working in a puddle of wet clay and he's always having colds and coughing, and there's always more or less fever," she said, looking down at the huge young fellow. "I know that he ought to give up his work and go away for a while—"
"Where?" demanded Burleson indignantly.
"Oh, somewhere—where there's plenty of—air. Like Arizona, and
Colorado."
"Do you think there's anything the matter with my lungs?" he roared.
"No!—you perfect idiot!" said Rita, seating herself; "and if you shout that way at me again I'll go to dinner with Kelly and Valerie and leave you here alone. I will not permit you to be uncivil, John. Please remember it."
Neville arrived in excellent spirits, greeted everybody, and stood beside Valerie, carelessly touching the tip of his fingers to hers where they hung at her side.