rus that
drowned his cry!

Randy, head up, eyes shining, marched into the house and had a servant
brush him off and powder a scratch on his chin; then he went down-stairs
to the Hunt Room and strode across the room until he came to where Becky
sat in her corner.

"I found your fan," he told her, and laid it, a blaze of lovely color,
on the table in front of her.

CHAPTER XIII

THE WHISTLING SALLY

I

Becky, as she journeyed towards the north, had carried with her a vision
of a new and rather disturbing Randy--a Randy who, striding across the
Hunt Room with high-held head, had delivered her fan, and had, later,
asked for an explanation.

"How did he get it, Becky?"

She had told him.

"Why didn't you tell me when I came back and said I would go for it?"

"I was afraid he might still be there."

"Well?"

"And that something might happen."

Something had happened later by the fountain. But Randy did not speak of
it. "I saw the fan in his hand and asked for it," grimly, "and he gave
it to me----"

On the night before she went away, Randy had said, "I can't tell you all
that you mean to me, Becky, and I am not going to try. But I am yours
always--remember that----" He had kissed her hand and held it for a
moment against his heart. Then he had left her, and Becky had wanted to
call him back and say something that she felt had been left unsaid, but
had found that she could not.

Admiral Meredith met his granddaughter in New York, and the rest of the
trip was made with him.

Admiral Meredith was as different from Judge Bannister in his mental
equipment as he was in physical appearance. He was a short little man,
who walked with a sailor's swing, and who laughed like a fog-horn. He
had ruddy cheeks, and the manners of a Chesterfield. If he lacked the
air of aristocratic calm which gave distinction to Judge Bannister, he
supplied in its place a sophistication due to his contact with a world
which moved faster than the Judge's world in Virginia.

He adored Becky, and resented her long sojourn in the South. "I believe
you love the Judge better than you do me," he told her, as he turned to
her in the taxi which took them from the train to the boat.

"I don't love anybody better than I do you," she said, and tucked her
hand in his.

"What have they been doing to you?" he demanded; "you are as white as
paper."

"Well, it has been hot."

"Of all the fool things to keep you down there in summer. I