thing with that air of smiling audacity which from time immemorial has been reputed to charm the feminine heart. And he was good to look at,—brown, slender, and wiry, with a straight-enough, posturesque profile, challenging feminine admiration, likewise sometimes the equally ardent masculine desire to despoil it, and in his gait a perfect blending of two philosophies,—the classical "carpe diem" and the more synchronistic "pep."
However, opinions differed about him. To nervous Salthaven mothers "that Philip Huntington" was a cogent reason for adding to their prayers for "those that go down to the sea in ships," another for "those that go down to big cities in trains." Cap'n Bluster approved him—or his prospects; Cap'n Fairwinds disliked him cordially. And even silent Ben had been known to allude—rather witheringly—to "the dude."
As for Sally, she was sure she detected a little over-consciousness and pride in two things, one in the fact that his father owned the large ship-building plant at New Bedford, as well as the pretentious home on the hill, the other, in that fatal facility which his room-mate had once described as "getting away with murder." He had just achieved a master-stroke in this fine art,—nothing less than the interception of both the Dean's and Registrar's letters which were to announce his ignominious and ultimate flunking at Yale. His allowance therefore secure for the summer, he was as triumphant as her father, and needed a taking down, "comeuppance," the villagers would have called it.
So she vouchsafed him only a most nonchalant "hello,"
