'd go to a chauffeurs' ball if the band was
the right thing. Wouldn't you?"

"With you," said Harry. "Democracy forever!"

"Oh, I'm not worrying about democracy. I'm out for a good time under
any conditions. That's the only thing that matters. Now let's go back
and change. It's too late to bathe. I'll wear a new frock to-night,
made for fox-trotting, and if Mrs. Hosack wants to know where we've
been when we come back as innocent as spring lambs, leave it to me. Men
can't lie as well as women can."

"It won't be Mrs. Hosack who'll ask," said Harry. "Bridge will do its
best to rivet her ubiquitous mind. It's the old man who'll be peeved.
He's crazy about you, you know."

Joan laughed. "He's very nice and means awfully well and all that," she
said, "but of course he isn't to be taken seriously. No men of middle
age ought to be. They all say the same things with the same expressions
as though they got them from the same books, and their gambolling makes
their joints creak. It's all like playing with a fire of damp logs. I
like something that can blaze and scorch. The game counts then."

"Then you ought to like me," said Harry, doing his best to look the
very devil of a fellow. Even he had to join in Joan's huge burst of
merriment. He had humor as well as a sense of the ridiculous, and the
first made it possible for him to laugh at himself,--a rare and
disconcerting gift which would utterly prevent his ever entering the
Senate.

"You might grow a moustache and wax the tips, Harry," she said, when
she had recovered sufficiently well to be able to speak. "Curl your
hair with tongs and take dancing lessons from a tango lizard or go in
for a course of sotto voce sayings from a French portrait painter, but
you'd still remain the Nice Boy. That's why I like you. You're as
refreshing and innocuous as a lettuce salad, and you may glare as much
as you like. I hope you'll never be spoilt. Come on. We shall be late
for dinner." And she made him quicken his step through the dry sand.

Being very young he was not quite sure that he appreciated that type of
approval. He had liked to imagine that he was distinctly one of the
bold bad boys, a regular dog and all that. He had often talked that
sort of thing in the rooms of his best chums whose mantelpieces were
covered with the photographs of little ladies, and he hoarded in his
memory two episodes at least of jealous looks from engaged men. But,
after all, with Joan, who was married