Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/40

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Like the extinguishing of a light, the approval faded out of the blue searching eyes, and the perfectly arched brows were knitted slightly. "Oh, I think every one ought to be both of those things," Miss Billie interrupted earnestly. "Especially when there is so much need for them just now. I have no patience with a peace-time slacker, any more than the war-time kind. I have come home from a world half-paralyzed, and——"

For a moment a shadow, as of an unpleasant memory, seemed to invade and darken her eyes, and Harrington was interested to note that the girl had not been where and doing what she had been in Europe without acquiring some serious notions herself. Clayton, he saw, had misrepresented Billie to a certain extent. She was not all frivolous, not by any means, and being John Boland's daughter, why, of course, she saw things in the large, and probably could talk of them that way. The concluding part of her observation, swiftly and spontaneously uttered, confirmed this: "And Europe," she went on, "is starving in soul because it is hungry in body! It's hungry in body because it has half lost the will to work. The need of the world today, as I see it, is for men that can put it to work—create work for it to do, I mean—revive commerce, industry—that sort of thing."

Henry was almost awed; but Charlie chaffed: "There spoke her father, Henry, Old Two Blades; no drones in his hive."

The girl mocked a frown and was just menacing Charlie with her fan when the violin emitted a preliminary squeak and Joe Morley, claiming his dance, swept the vivacious and expertly articulate Miss Boland from