d. "Never mind! Don't take it to
heart, and--are those violets for me? You are a dear, after all! I love
them." She took them from his outstretched hand and buried her face in
them, whilst he, usually so nimble of tongue and ready of word, was
striving to overcome this alarming confusion and embarrassment that
rendered him about as quick of wit as a soft-shelled clam. In fact, he
felt like a jelly fish save that he was twice as incompetent.

"You see," he began lamely, "I didn't quite know what to do. I was
afraid that maybe your mother had objected to your going to the horse
show, and----"

"Why, you're not afraid of her, are you? You never seemed so before. I
thought--I thought you and she were rather good friends." There was a
vague tinge of sarcasm in her words and tone but like a wobbly legged
pup trying to catch a butterfly he mentally leaped at this offering and
began cudgeling his memory in quest of women who ran chocolate shops.
Could it be that she was the daughter of the widow Haynes who owned the
Bon-Ton in Detroit? Impossible! The widow was not more than thirty.
Maybe Mrs. Harris of Miami? No, if Mrs. Harris had a daughter she would
have that unmistakable Southern peculiarity of speech. This girl was
from somewhere farther north. It couldn't be that she was the daughter
of Mrs. Schumann of Milwaukee? Heaven forbid! For Mrs. Schumann was so
fat she shook like an unsupported pyramid of blanc-mange whenever she
moved.

"I had hopes for you yesterday," a voice aroused him from his lapse.
"You acted as if you could talk when you turned loose; but now you're
back in your old hopeless form. Come on! Wake up! Oh, I forgot to tell
you the great news. Like to hear it?"

"I like to hear you say anything," said Jimmy, hopelessly at her mercy
and speaking the truth, and nothing but the truth so help him Bob! and
glancing at her with that unmistakable sick-calf expression that seems
to be the inevitable accomplishment of all lovers, and that the original
Eve must have noticed in the eyes of Adam as he stood lolling around
Eden in his red flannel underwear.

"Mamma got an invitation to spend the winter down in St. Augustine with
the Charles K. Wilmarths, and she knows I hate them. She wanted to go
because, as you know, she thinks she's not at all well, and also because
the Charles K. Wilmarths are rather swagger. Either because she wished
to get rid of me, or because I raised such a fuss, she compromised. I'm
to be