PEGGY-IN-THE-RAIN
telephoned out to Amesdene for his saddle horse, joined a group of taproom golfers and imbibed a long, cold julep while waiting. Folly, a bay mare with an excitable and suspicious disposition, sidled her way through town, having a conniption fit at every encounter with a street car, and cantered through the pines to the big hotel on the other side of the village. Gordon ambled the length of the piazza, snooped into shady parlors and finally searched the register, running his finger back over two weeks of signatures. But that method was rather hopeless, as he realized, for it was more than likely that the name he sought was only a diminutive, or even a nickname. At all events, he found no entry on the register that encouraged inquiry, and he mounted his horse again and rode out to Amesdene.
The big white house with its tall pillars and green blinds, a rather showy replica of an old-fashioned Southern Colonial residence, was closed, for since Gordon's father had died, five years before, the place had lost its attractions for Mrs. Ames, who preferred the dingy brownstone house on Fifth Avenue to any place she knew of. Gor-
26
