She found Hobart and Caleb Patmore playing chess, a favorite recreation of the former’s.
“I’m quite a gamester,” Caleb said, with visible relief as she appeared. “Ernestine lapses into childhood via dominoes and Collin actually stops painting to drag me into casino—casino, Thurley! Why do you not stroke my brow or show some symptom of humanity? Polly Harris yearns for cribbage; you know Polly still hints of that ancestry of hers where she had school marms for aunts and judges for uncles and her cousins all went to military academies. Why this odd devil takes to chess for his pleasure—I understand it not. Help, ho, Thurley, take my place—will you?”
Thurley hesitated. It was not to her liking nor her intention to have any one present at her visit, but she dallied the question gracefully, submitting a list of songs for the concert tour and pretending grave anxiety as to the recovery of one of the songbirds recently in a motor accident.
As she rose to go, inventing a dinner engagement, Hobart accompanied her into the reception hall, leaving Caleb straddled on the fire-settle wondering—who knows what?
“What did you really want?” Hobart asked, as she paused before the door. “Don’t tell me you’re going to do Red Cross work and wear a uniform—”
“It’s the criticism,” she said simply. “It hurt—you might have warned me when you saw my faults.”
“I warned you not to waste summers,” he reminded. “I said all I could. You are no longer my pupil and I have other things which take my time.”
“What shall I do?” she demanded petulantly. “I will not be a mere shooting-star person as so many would like to see me—”
“Well, well, let us see.” He placed his hands on her shoulders in the benevolent, paternal fashion she so admired. But she spoiled it by trying to flirt with him as she looked up.
He dropped his hands as if he read the meaning of the coquettish gaze. “Suppose you find a hobby, Thurley; put all your airs and mannerisms into it. It often works for the best good—what shall it be? Collecting butterflies or canes, opening Indian mounds—trying to write a play—discovering the fourth dimension—eh?”
Tears were in her eyes. And the big ache of her heart was changed into a sob which rose in her throat with a penitent murmur.