CHAPTER XIV
The boy—for as yet he was only a boy—sailed in May. The girl—who was swiftly stripping from her the last rainbow chiffons of girlhood—was at the steamer to see him off—down from Poughkeepsie for that purpose.
And the instant she arrived he noticed what this last brief absence had done for her; how subtly her maturing self-confidence had altered the situation, placing her on a new footing with himself.
There was a little of the lean, long-legged, sweet-faced girl left: a slender yet rounded symmetry had replaced obvious joints and bones.
"What is it—basket ball?" he inquired admiringly.
"You like my figure?" she inquired guilelessly. "Oh, I've grown up within a month. It's just what was coming to me."
"Nice line of slang they give you up there," he said, laughing. "You're nearly as tall as I am, too. I don't know you, little sister."
"You never did, little brother. You'll be sorry some day that you wasted all the school-girl adoration I lavished on you."
"Don't you intend to lavish any more?" he inquired, laughing, yet very keenly alert to her smiling assurance, which was at the same time humourous, provocative and engaging.
"I don't know. I'm over my girlhood illusions. Men are horrid pigs, mostly. It's a very horrid thing you're doing to me right now," she said, "—going off to have a wonderful time by yourself for the next two years and leaving me to work in a children's hospital! But I mean to make you pay for it. Wait and see."