l and free permission of the company to
depart he did so, changing his mind twice about whether to go through
the rose arbor or round by the sun-dial.

Johnny swung in by the side of Constance.

"Some one told me you had a message for me," he blundered.

"Who said so?" she was cruel enough to ask.

Johnny turned pink, but he was brave and replied with the truth.

"Mr. Courtney," he admitted.

"So I imagined," she answered icily. "Mr. Washer and Mr. Close and
Colonel Bouncer are to arrive on the noon train. You'll excuse me,
won't you, please?" And she hurried on to the house by herself to dress
for luncheon.

Johnny Gamble tried to say "Certainly", but he dropped his sailor straw
hat. Constance heard it and every muscle in her body jumped and
stiffened. Johnny turned to business as a disappointed lover turns to
drink.

There seemed a conspicuous dearth of Wobbleses on the east loggia that
morning. Loring, pathetically faithful to his post, entertained them in
relays as Johnny brought them up: sometimes one, sometimes two, and
once or twice as many as three of them at one time; but they all lost
their feeble mooring and drifted away.

Luncheon-time passed; Washer and Bouncer and Close and Courtney went
into executive session; two o'clock came, three o'clock, four o'clock,
and still no meeting. At the latter hour Johnny, making his tireless
rounds but afflicted with despair, located Billy Wobbles, the one with
the jerky eyelids and impulsive knees, on the loggia with Loring;
Eugene was in the poker room trying numbly to discover the difference
between a four-flush and a deuce-high hand; Tommy, his toupee well down
toward his scanty white eyebrows, was boring the Courtney girls to the
verge of tears; Cecil, stumbling almost rhythmically over his own
calves, was playing tennis with Winnie and Sammy and Mrs. Follison; and
Reggie, the twitcher, was entertaining Val Russel and Bruce Townley
with a story he had started at nine o'clock in the morning.

Suddenly Johnny was visited with a long-sought inspiration and hurried
down to the kennels, remembering with much self-scorn that he had
dragged each of the Wobbleses away from there at least once.

The master of the dogs was Irish and young, with eyes the color of a
six-o'clock sky on a sunny day, and he greeted Johnny with a
white-toothed smile that would have melted honey.

"I locked Beauty up, sir," he said with a touch of his cap, referring
to the gentle collie