"Why be catty, Marian?" Edith retorted with asperity. "It isn't becoming."
Marian laughed. "You silly child!" she said. "You are the most supremely selfish creature in the world, but you are so blissfully unconscious of the fact that I love you for it. Some one has to stand up for Ricky; Heaven knows he can't stand up for himself."
"Very good." Edith was only partly mollified. "I've no doubt Ricky will be exceedingly grateful, but if you were to ask me I'd say that you have men enough on your hands already without him. Now, I'm going to my room to dress for luncheon. Afterwards, when you find an opportunity, I want you to pump Mr. Huntington dry about Cossie—Connie—I'll never get used to that name!—and leave me to do the rest."
Unconscious of plots and counterplots, Cosden and Huntington sauntered innocently onto the piazza after their noonday meal. Billy had managed to get himself invited to the Thatchers' table, so the two friends had lunched by themselves. Both were self-centered, but neither noticed it because of his own abstraction. Cosden was measuring up the girl as his opportunity for observation broadened, Huntington was still affected by his experience with Hamlen. Curiously enough, in spite of their friendship, or perhaps because their intimacy gave each so clear a knowledge of the other's characteristics neither one cared to speak of the subject which was uppermost in his mind. "Monty is too much of a cynic to appreciate my situation here," Cosden told himself; and Huntington, without even mentally putting it into words, knew that Hamlen did not and never would appeal to Cosden.
Shortly after the men had lighted their cigars the party from the Thatchers' table joined them. Marian noticed that Edith casually dropped into the chair beside Cosden's, and was amused to see that she began operations at once.
"What are we going to do this afternoon?" Edith queried breezily.
"We've all been going since breakfast," Stevens suggested; "why not sit still for a while?"
"Ricky!" said his sister severely, "no one asked your opinion. What in the world is the use of sitting still? We can do that at home."
"What do you suggest?" Cosden asked her incautiously.
"Have you been to Harrington Sound?"