"I'm sorry, Beatrice," he went on again after a short silence, "but I—well, dash it all, I care, you know!"
"You mustn't, Tommy."
"But what if I jolly well can't help myself? After all, you know, you must give a fellah a chance. Of course, I want you to be happy, and I'd do anything I could to make you so, but—well, there it is! I'm fond of you, Beatrice!"
She could smile quite calmly at him now, and did so. "Very well, Tommy, you're fond of me. Suppose we leave it there for the present.—And now I think I shall go in. It's getting chilly out here."
Evidently it had not quite come to that with her.
Nor did it, for all Tommy could do, before James' arrival a few days later. Aunt Selina came with him; she had elected to spend the summer at her Vermont house, and found it, as she explained to her hostess, "too warm. The interior, you know." With which she closed her lips and gave the impression of charitably refraining from, richly deserved censure of the interior's shortcomings. Aunt Cecilia nodded with the most perfect understanding, and said she supposed it must have been warm in New York also.
James allowed that it had.
Aunt Selina said she had read in the paper that August was likely to be as hot as July there.
Beatrice, just in order to be on the safe side, said that she felt like Rather a Brute.
Tommy, with a vague idea of vindicating her, remarked that some days had been jolly warm in Bar Harbor, too.