CHAPTER FOURTEEN
NO sooner had Michael Harrington seated himself at the card-table with his wife and Nora than he picked up a magazine and, as he always said, “kept the light from his eyes.” Some men—few there be—who boldly state they desire to sleep, but Michael was of the tactful majority and merely kept the light from his eyes and, incidentally, prevented any observers from noting that his eyes were closed.
He considered this a better way of waiting for Monty than to chatter as the women were doing of the events of the night.
“I wonder what’s become of Monty?” Alice asked presently.
“He’s kept us twenty minutes,” Nora returned crossly. “I saw him go out in the garden. He said it was to relieve his headache, but I really believe he wanted to capture the gang single-handed. Wouldn’t it be thrilling if he did?”
“A little improbable,” Alice laughed; “but still men do the oddest things sometimes. I never thought Michael the fighting kind till he knocked a man down once for kissing his hand to me.”
“It was fine of Michael,” Nora said. “The man deserved it.”
“I know, dear,” her hostess said, “but, as it happens, the man was kissing his hand to his infant son six months old in an upper window. It cost Michael fifty dollars, but I loved him all the more for it. Look at the dear old thing slumbering peacefully and imagining I think he’s keeping this very gentle light from his eyes.”
“It’s the two highballs he had in Mr. Denby’s room,” the sapient ingénue explained. She harked back to Monty. “I wish he were as brave about proposing. I’ve tried my grandmother’s recipes for shy men, and all my mother ever knew, I know. And yet he does get so flustered when he tries, that he scares himself away.”
Alice nodded. “He’s the kind you’ve got to lead to the altar. I had trouble with Michael. He imagined himself too hopelessly old, and very nearly married quite an elderly female. He’d have been dead now if he had. Here’s your prey coming in now.”