They waited to see the joyous serpentine, to watch Jimsy's struggles to get down from the shoulders of his adorers who bore him the length of the field and back, and then Carter drove them home and went back for the Captain, who would be showered and dressed by that time. They were both dining with Honor, but Jimsy looked in on his father first.
"Gusty says he's slept all day," he reported to Honor. He kept looking at her, with an odd intensity, all through the lively meal. She had changed her wet white jersey for one of her long-lined, cleverly simple frocks of L. A. blue, and her honey-colored braids were like a crown above her serene forehead.
"You know, Stephen," said Miss Bruce-Drummond while they were having their coffee in the living room, "of course you know that both those lads are in love with your nice girl."
"Do you see it, too?"
She laughed. "I may not know what a 'down' is, but I've still reasonably sharp eyes in my head. And the odd thing is that she doesn't know it."
"Isn't it amazing? I'm watching, and wondering."
"It's a pretty time o' life, Stephen," said one of the clever women he hadn't wanted to marry.
"'Youth's sweet-scented manuscript,' Ethel," said Honor's stepfather.
"Jimsy, will you come here a minute?" Honor called from the dining-room door.