“Don’t you know what they mean, Eddie?”
“Sure I do!” He leaned toward her and placed his hand lightly over hers. “T.B.—True Blue—that’s what they mean, little lady.”
She could feel the veins in his palm throbbing.
[8] Copyright, 1915, by The Curtis Publishing Company. Copyright, 1916, by Fannie Hurst.
MR. EBERDEEN’S HOUSE[9]
By ARTHUR JOHNSON
From The Century
It loomed there, high and large, uncompromised by the gloom of mist about it, unruffled by the easterly gusts that bent the two rows of larches which stretched in deliberate diagonal lines from the street to the corners of its grim façade. Hastings could hear the beating of the sea; it was probably in that chaos of space behind the house. As he stood leaning against one of the tall gate-posts and surveying the scene, he began to feel, almost in spite of himself, in sympathy with it.
A motor drew up near where he stood. Instinctively his attention was directed from it to the green Georgian portal, which at the moment was drawn in to permit somebody to pass out. She was in glaring contrast to her setting; she was fresh and lovely, young and fashionable-looking. She paused on the wide stone step, glanced up at the sky, opened her umbrella, and briskly proceeded down the avenue to the gate. Within a few yards of it she raised her eyes from the puddled gravel and started back at sight of him.
“Jack!” she cried out. “How did you get here? Why didn’t you tell me? I am this minute on my way to meet you.”
“I’m admiring your summer home, Julia—Julia dear,” he said to her, a little constrained. “It’s sad and desolate, and everything that I suppose you want it to be. I expected to hate it. I thought that having spent most of my life away from all this, I should have lost every scrap of—tolerance for New England. But ever since I set foot in Rockface—”