made clear—wherefore, after breakfast, the young attorney's progress along North Street to the office was almost triumphal. Everybody had to greet him, shake hands with him, slap him on the back, congratulate him on his daring.
But Henry shook his congratulators off long enough to stop in at Charlie Culp's place and leave an order for an automobile. "The finest little chase-about that five thousand dollars will buy." That was his specification, whereat Culp grinned, because the demand for nifty little cars designed exclusively for two had been looking up the last day or so in Edgewater.
Yet it was not apropos of this order for a car that Henry, as he rode out to the Country Club, assured himself stoutly: "But I won't tell her today. I'll show her I can contain myself a little while at least."
However, the very first glimpse of Billie in her golf togs was shattering to resolution of any sort. Her color scheme this morning was the greenest of green with the whitest of white—while the color contrasts in her face were never more vivid—those pinks, those reds, the eyes blue as the water of the inlet—the picture was devastating and her greeting was cordiality itself.
"And so everybody is talking about you today," she hailed; and the light of congratulation dancing in her eyes shook Harrington all loose inside.
"Absurd—what they're saying," he blushed; "let's go to it," and he motioned toward the links. His eyes fell before hers—he was in a strange state of confusion. "Lord, I've got to hold on to myself or I'll blurt it out right now," he confessed to himself. "Lord, I wish she'd stop looking at me that way." But he didn't wish it.
