"What's the matter, Roderick? You look like a banquet of the Skull and Bones, which my brother described to me once, when he was at Yale."
"I'll tell you about it later," was the response; and Duncan shut his jaws, and bent his attention grimly upon the stage.
"Why not now?" She asked.
"There isn't time; and besides—"
"Have you been quarreling with our Juno? Have you two been scrapping?" She whispered, smiling bewitchingly, and bending still nearer to him. Miss Brunswick was sometimes given to the milder uses of slang.
Duncan nodded, without replying in words. He kept his eyes directly toward the stage. But Miss Brunswick was insistent.
"Is Patricia on her high horse to-night?" she asked, with a light laugh.
Duncan replied to her with another nod, and a wry smile.
"She wants to look out about that high horse of hers, Roderick, or sometime it will hit the top rail and give her a fall that she won't get over for a while. What our beautiful Juno needs most is what I used to get oftenest when I was about three years old. Perhaps you can guess what it was; if you can't, I won't tell you."
"I expect you were a regular little devil then, weren't you?" he asked, endeavoring to assume a cheerfulness he was far from experiencing at that moment.