She nodded. "Yes. It's rather frightful, really, to separate people who have no means of communication. Especially when—" she broke off, looking at Carter who was pointing out to Honor what he believed to be the Field of Bannockburn.
Stephen Lorimer shook his head. "No danger there," he said comfortably. "Top Step is sorry for him—a creature of another, paler world ... infinitely beneath her bright and beamish boy's. No, I feel a lot safer to have Carter with her than with Jimsy King."
The Englishwoman stared. "Really?"
"Yes. I daresay I exaggerate, but I've always seen something sinister about that youth."
Miss Bruce-Drummond looked at Carter Van Meter and observed the way in which he was looking at Honor. "He wants her frightfully, doesn't he, poor thing?"
"He wants her frightfully but he isn't a poor thing in the very least. He is an almost uncannily clever and subtle young person for his years, with a very large income and a fanatically devoted mother behind him, and he's had everything he ever wanted all his life except physical perfection,—and my good Top Step."
"Ah, yes, but what can he do, after all?"
Honor's stepfather shrugged. "He knows that she would not be allowed to marry the lad if he went the way of the other 'Wild Kings,'—that she is too sound and sane to insist on it. And I think—I thought even in their High School days—that he deliberately steers Jimsy into danger."
"My word!" said the novelist, hotly. "What are you going to do about it, Stephen?"
"Watch. Wait. Stand ready. I shall make it my business to drop in at the fraternity house once or twice next season, when I go north to San Francisco,—and into other fraternity houses, and put my ear to the ground. And if I find what I fear to find I'll take it up with both the lads, face to face, and then I'll send for Honor."