she, distrusting the rounded periods and the pulpit highfalutin, which he adopted because it annoyed her, tartly requested him to "cut out the skypilot stuff." Then she condescended to explain the "occasion."
"That simp Huntington" (hitherto she had called the boy—with some show of affection—"the Kid") "was to be married." Andcould he beat it?
MacAllister didn't say as to that, but descending from his tantalizing toploftical plane, inquired in her own dialect, "just what that meant in her sweet, young life?"
Here the bronzed slipper paused for reflection—jealousy, that was the system. MacAllister was her guide, her mentor, and chief. Not that his code was hers, hopskotch, syncopated sort of thing though hers was, but she admired him, was dominated by him. Still he was a male and, though he were Napoleon himself, should have been subject to those reactions (to the feminine) which it was a girl's best strategy, her surest source of revenue, to play upon. But not realizing that MacAllister was immune to her charms, she tried to shower their opulence upon him. The soft, generously-moulded arm fell on his with what she meant to be the lightest of caresses, the rayed eyelashes languishing.
But neither cuteness, pertness, nor languor, suited her Amazonian outlay, and MacAllister, with unerring taste, saw that this manœuvre did not at all become her. He picked up her arm, replaced it at her side, then flicked the residuum of talcum from his sleeve, with the rude request, addressed to her as "Frail Lily of the Vale," that she "deposit her pollen—on some other flower."
