ed, grinning, to interrupt
her. "He never--none whatever. But he has now."

"He hasn't."

"Leave it to Jerry. Jerry saw him that first night in at Tait's; then
afterward, in the office."

"Oh, come on!" Barbara started ahead impatiently. "What difference would
it make."

They went on ahead of me, scrapping briskly, as a boy and girl do who
have grown up together. I stumped along after and reflected on the folly
of mankind in general, and that of Allen G. Cummings in particular. That
careful, mature bachelor had seen this lustrous young creature blossom
to her present perfection; he'd no doubt offered her safe and sane
attention, when she came to live in San Francisco where they had friends
in common. But it had needed Worth Gilbert's appearance on the scene to
wake him up to his own real feeling. Forty-five on the chase of nimble
sweet and twenty; Cummings was in for sore feet and humiliating
tumbles--and we were in for the worst he could do to us. I sighed. Worth
had more than one way of making enemies, it seemed.

At last we came in sight of the country club upon its rise of ground
overlooking the golf links. The low, brown clubhouse, built bungalow
fashion, with a long front gallery and gravel sweep, was swarming with
people--the decorators. Motors came and went. The grounds were being
strung with paper lanterns. We skirted these, and the links itself where
there were two or three players, obstinate, defiant old men who would
have their game in spite of forty blossom festivals--climbed a fence,
and crossed the grass up to the crest of a little round hill, halting
there for the view. It wasn't high, but standing free as it did, it
commanded pretty nearly the entire Santa Ysobel district. Massed acres
of pink and white, the great orchards ran one into the other without
break for miles. The lanes between the trunks, diamonded like a
harlequin's robe in mathematical primness, were newly turned furrows of
rich, black soil, against which the gray or, sometimes, whitewashed
trunks of apricot, peach and plum trees gave contrast. Then the cap of
glorious blossoms, meeting overhead in the older orchards, with a warm
blue sky above and puffs of clouds that matched the pure white of the
plum trees' bloom.

The spot suited me well; we had left the town behind us; here neither
Dykeman's spotter nor any one he hired to help him could get within
listening distance, I dropped down on a bank; Worth and Barbara disposed
themsel