“Not to me,” declared Rube.
“Perhaps not to me, either,” conceded Jerome, looking on the subject more seriously. “For Clara—”
“You can patch up Clara,” Rube suggested, soothingly.
“Do you think so? It’s a rankling casus belli at present, I can tell you! But how about your rustic beauty, eh, Rube? Is she pleased? Does she like it?”
“Pleased? Like it? You bet she does! She’s delighted!”
“No one has introduced me yet,” Jerome next remarked, quite incidentally. “And I am sure if her Gracious Majesty smiles upon any of her loyal subjects it ought to be me.”
“That’s so! So come right along now.” They reached her side.
“Mell, here’s the very best fellow in the world,” said Rube, out of the fullness of his heart, forgetting the prescribed forms of etiquette in the absorption of warm feeling.
Mell had noted their approach. She was not taken unawares. She bent her head slightly to the newcomer, she looked him over for a whole minute, it seemed, before she opened her lips and said: