“Who’s the man?” demanded Mrs. “Arly” Fosland, with breathless interest.
“We saw you dash up,” supplemented Lucile. “We thought it was a fire.”
“Why doesn’t he come in?” this from Arly, in whom two years of polite married life had not destroyed an innocently eager curiosity to inspect eligibles at close range, for her friends.
“Who is he?” insisted Lucile, peeping out of the hall window.
“Edward E. Allison,” primly announced Gail, suppressing a giggle. “I got him at Uncle Jim’s vestry meeting. He’s waiting to take me riding in the Park. Where’s my tea?”
“Edward E. Allison!” gasped “Arly” Fosland. “Why, he’s the richest bachelor in New York, even if he isn’t a social butterfly,” and she contemplated Gail in sisterly wonder and admiration. “Good gracious, child, run!”
“Come for the tea to-morrow!” urged Lucile.
They were all three laughing, and the two young married women were pushing Gail forward. At the door Lucile and Arly separated from her, to peer out of the two side windows.
“He doesn’t look so old,” speculated Arly; and Lucile opened the door.
“Good-bye, dearie,” and Lucile kissed her cousin in plain sight of the curb, upon which there was nothing for that young lady to do but go.
For an instant, Edward E. Allison had a glimpse of her, in her garnet and turquoise, flanked by a sprightly vision in blue and another sprightly vision in pink, and he thought he heard the suppressed sounds of tittering; then the door closed, and the lace curtains of the hall windows bulged outward, and Gail came tripping down the steps.
“Two minutes and forty-eight seconds,” called Allison, putting away his stop watch with one hand and helping her with the other. He tucked her in more quickly than at the church, but with equal care, then he jumped in beside her, and never had he cut so swift and sure a circle with his sixty horse-power runabout.
They raced up and into the Park, and around the winding driveways with the light-hearted exhilaration of children, and if there was in them at that moment any trace of mature thought, they were neither one aware of it. They were glad that they were just living, and moving swiftly in the open air, glad that it was snowing, glad that the light was beginning to fade, that there were other vehicles in the Park, that the world was such a bright and happy place; and they were quite pleased, too, to be together.