"Oh, I know how you are," he replied, sadly yet a little loftily, as though this were an old situation to him. "You don't like me, that's all. I see that now, all right."
"Gee, but you're mean," she persisted, affecting an injured air. "It's the God's truth. Believe me or not, I swear it. Honest it is."
Clyde stood there. In the face of this small trick there was really nothing much to say as he saw it. He could not force her to do anything. If she wanted to lie and pretend, he would have to pretend to believe her. And yet a great sadness settled down upon him. He was not to win her after all—that was plain. He turned, and she, being convinced that he felt that she was lying now, felt it incumbent upon herself to do something about it—to win him around to her again.
"Please, Clyde, please," she began now, most artfully, "I mean that. Really, I do. Won't you believe me? But I will next week, sure. Honest, I will. Won't you believe that? I meant everything I said when I said it. Honest, I did. I do like you—a lot. Won't you believe that, too—please?"
And Clyde, thrilled from head to toe by this latest phase of her artistry, agreed that he would. And once more he began to smile and recover his gayety. And by the time they reached the car, to which they were all called a few minutes after by Hegglund, because of the time, and he had held her hand and kissed her often, he was quite convinced that the dream he had been dreaming was as certain of fulfillment as anything could be. Oh, the glory of it when it should come true!
CHAPTER XIX
For the major portion of the return trip to Kansas City, there was nothing to mar the very agreeable illusion under which Clyde rested. He sat beside Hortense, who leaned her head against his shoulder. And although Sparser, who had waited for the others to step in before taking the wheel, had squeezed her arm and received an answering and promising look, Clyde had not seen that.
But the hour being late and the admonitions of Hegglund, Ratterer and Higby being all for speed, and the mood of Sparser, because of the looks bestowed upon him by Hortense, being the gayest and most drunken, it was not long before the outlying lamps of the environs began to show. For the car was rushed along the road at break-neck speed. At one point, however, where one of the eastern trunk lines approached the city, there was a long and unexpected and disturbing wait at a grade crossing where two freight trains met and passed. Farther in, at North Kansas City, it began to snow, great soft slushy flakes, feathering down and coating the road surface with a slippery layer of mud which required more caution than had been thus far displayed. It was then half past five. Ordinarily, an additional eight minutes at high speed would have served to bring the car within a block or two of the hotel. But now, with another delay near Hannibal Bridge owing to grade crossing, it was twenty minutes to six before the bridge was crossed and Wyandotte Street reached. And already all four of these youths had lost all sense of the delight of the trip and the pleasure the companionship of these girls had given them. For already they were worrying as to the probability of their reaching the hotel in time. The smug and martinetish figure of Mr. Squires loomed before them all.
"Gee, if we don't do better than this," observed Ratterer to Higby, who was nervously fumbling with his watch, "we're not goin' to make it. We'll hardly have time, as it is, to change."
Clyde, hearing him, exclaimed: "Oh, crickets! I wish we could hurry a little. Gee, I wish now we hadn't come to-day. It'll be tough if we don't get there on time."