"A happy one, Mr. Grey." David's eyes twinkled and sparkled.
"Well, sir, I paid my debts and got back my collateral."
"I tasted whiskey," said David. "I lighted a cigarette, I registered a bet of two cents upon the weather, and I made love."
Uriah Grey with difficulty suppressed a moan.
"Yes," said David. "I kissed the glove upon a lady's hand." He laughed. "It smelled of gasoline," he said.
"What!" cried David offendedly. "Are you through with me?"
"It is now lawful for me to make love," said David; "but I should do so with a better grace if I had your permission and approval."
"What!" thundered the old man. "You want to make love to my granddaughter!"
"Yes," said David boldly, "and I wonder what you are going to say."
Spools of silk rattled from her lap to the floor. She was frankly and childishly delighted to see him again, and she hurried to him and gave him both her hands. But he looked so happy that her heart misgave her for a moment, and then she read his eyes aright, just as long since he must have read the confession in hers. At this juncture in their lives there could not have been detected in either of them the least show of hesitation or embarrassment. It was as if two travellers in the desert, dying of thirst, should meet, and each conceive in hallucination that the other was a spring of sweet water.
Presently David was looking into the lovely face that he held between his hands. He had by this time squeezed her shoulders, patted her back, kissed her feet, her dress, her hands, her eyes, and pawed her hair. They were both very short of breath.
"Violet," he gasped, "what is your name?"
It was the beginning of another of those long, tedious afternoons. But to the young people concerned it seemed that never until then had such words as they spoke to each other been spoken, or such feelings of almost insupportable tenderness and adoration been experienced.
Yet back there in Aiken, Sapphira was experiencing the same feelings, and thinking the same thoughts about them; and so was Billy McAllen. And when you think that he had already been divorced once, and that Sapphira, as she herself (for once truthfully) confessed, was still twenty-five, it gives you as high an opinion of the little bare god--as he deserves.