had for three days
been doing to him what they now tried doing to the new boy; he was glad
the new boy had come. He had grown sulky under the incessant onslaughts.

The girl with black hair and the turquoise necklace was already reading
Wilbur's palm, disclosing to him that he had a deep vein of cruelty in
his nature. Patricia Whipple listened impatiently to this and other
sinister revelations. She had not learned palm reading, but now resolved
to. Meantime, she could and did stem the flood of character portrayal by
a suggestion of tennis. Patricia was still freckled, though not so
obtrusively as in the days of her lawlessness. Her skirt and her hair
were longer, the latter being what Wilbur Cowan later called rusty. She
was still active and still determined, however. No girl in her presence
was going to read interminably the palm of one upon whom she had, in a
way of speaking, a family claim, especially one of such distinguished
appearance and manners--apparently being bored to death by the attention
of mere girls.

Tennis resulted in a set of doubles, Merle and his little friend playing
Patricia and one of her little friends--the one with the necklace and
the dark eyes. The desirable new man was not dressed for tennis, and
could not have played it in any clothes whatever, and so had to watch
from the back line, where he also retrieved balls. Both girls had
insisted upon being at his end of the court. Their gentlemen opponents
were irritated by this arrangement, because the girls paid far more
attention to the new man than to the game itself. They delayed their
service to catch his last remark; delayed the game seriously by pausing
to chat with him. He retrieved balls for them, which also impeded
progress.

When he brought the balls to the dark-eyed girl she acknowledged his
courtesy with a pretty little "Thanks a lot!" Patricia varied this. She
said "Thanks a heap!" And they both rather glared at the other girl--a
mere pinkish, big-eyed girl whose name was Florrie--who lingered
stanchly by the new man and often kept him in talk when he should have
been watchful. Still this third girl had but little initiative. She did
insinuatingly ask Wilbur what his favourite flower was, but this got her
nowhere, because it proved that he did not know.

The gentlemen across the net presently became unruly, and would play no
more at a game which was merely intended, it seemed, to provide their
opponents with talk of a coquettish