Theirs was a high, animal pulse—such relish and excitement of living as a runner has who pulls himself together for a leap. Those purposes and emotions that had had their growth in the thick atmosphere of the storm were quickened, pressing against circumstance, ready to burst out. They boded a crisis.
Julia Budd’s face alone was assurance of happenings as she came across the lawn with her long, free step, her skirts picked high, her dachshunds in leash. Eyes lowering, mouth smiling, she looked neither at Bessie Lewis on her right, nor Thair on her left, but talked rapidly, apparently for any ears that cared to listen. Now she quickened her pace, took the path border in a leap, and had a hand on Holden’s arm.
“Mr. Thair says it’s too heavy going for the hunt!” She threw it out, less a plea than a flat statement.
“Good heavens, young woman!” Holden’s eye ran over the dripping terraces. “They won’t have the dogs out to-day!”
“M’m,” she nodded emphatically. “I rang up the club before breakfast, and the M. F. H. says, ‘Yes.’”
Holden grunted. “They’ll mire in a minute.”
She thrust out her shoe, damp but unmuddied, with a laugh. She called out his broadest smile.
“It’s another thing down there.” He indicated the “sea meadows” with a back motion of the head. “If we fellows break our necks it doesn’t matter; but you ladies—wait till next week!”
“It may dry off enough by afternoon,” Holden said, admiring her spirit.
“Will you go with me, then?” Her foot drummed the ground. As he hesitated, she flashed round at Thair.
“I’ll go!” said Longacre, across the group.
It looked so obviously a gallantry to rescue a lost cause! For an instant it seemed she hated him. Then she laughed.
“Nor I,” said Longacre. “That’s not why I asked you to let me come.”
Julia looked at him in confusion. This sudden sally out of his aloofness touched her, and left her at a loss.
Florence Essington bowed her face to the yellow mass of chrysanthemums—held it there a moment. When she looked up, Longacre was kneeling to unfasten the dachshunds’ leash, the girl standing straight, with quick-rising bosom, but a composed face averted from him, looking down the terraces.
As the unleashed dogs capered up around her, she began tossing twigs and pebbles down the slope, the dogs scuttling back and forth in an ecstasy of barking.