Grace Harlowes Golden Summer | Page 8

a distinguished lawyeress."
"Having once admired me, can you refuse my humble request?" retorted Elfreda, with a sentimental rolling of her round blue eyes.
"Let's put her out of her misery," proposed Miriam. "Wildwood for me, Elfreda, provided the rest are pleased. How about you, Arline? As an almost-wed are you willing to sacrifice your reunion claim to Elfreda?"
"Of course." Arline made genial response. A peculiar look shot into her pretty eyes, however, as she nervously began to turn the jeweled pledge of engagement that decked her ring finger. She seemed about to break into further speech, then set her red lips with decision and remained silent.
Seated beside her on a willow settee, which they had occupied together since repairing to the veranda after dinner, Grace alone noticed Arline's sharply drawn brows and the sudden ominous tightening of her baby mouth. She wondered vaguely what it might mean. Surely Arline was not angry because Elfreda had begged for the privilege of holding the reunion at Wildwood. She was of too sunny a disposition to become thus disturbed by such trifles. She had always been far more ready to give than take. Grace now recalled that even in the midst of Arline's joy at seeing her, there had been a hauntingly wistful look in the dainty little girl's blue eyes.
Under cover of Kathleen West's lively account of a big story which she had run to earth after a week's assiduous pursuit, Grace's kindly hand found Arline's.
"What is the matter, Daffydowndilly?" she asked just above a whisper. "You don't appear to be quite your usual cheerful self."
"You noticed, then?" counter-questioned Arline in an equally guarded tone. "I'm glad you did. Still, I was going to tell you, anyway. Wait until later. I have arranged for you to room with me to-night. Then I'll tell you all. But not now. No one else must know."
With a soft pressure that betokened loyal sympathy, Grace released Arline's little hand and turned her attention to Kathleen, who was holding her small audience spellbound by a recital of the very audacity of her deeds as a star reporter.
"Won't you miss all that when winter comes and you cease to be Kathleen West?" questioned Anne, a trifle anxiously. She too had had to decide between publicity and love. "You've lived in a whirl of exciting happenings so long that settling down for good will seem rather tame."
"I shall love it." Kathleen's sharp black eyes glowed with intensity. "Trailing news is all right for a few years, but I'd hate to go on with it forever. There are so many things I'd like to do that I've never had the time to dream of doing. I'm going to keep on writing, just the same as ever. Neither Gerald nor I care to begin making a home just yet. We shall board and write in the evenings together. You see he is the literary editor of Crawford's Magazine now. That means that we can spend our evenings together. We are going to collaborate on a play and, oh, we have planned to do lots of things. I imagine we shall carry out some of our plans in time. We have already collaborated on several magazine stories and worked them out beautifully. You see, neither of us is jealous of the other's work. If we were, then I'd prefer to stay Kathleen West."
"You are fortunate," remarked Arline almost bitterly. Again a shadow crossed her face which Grace alone noted.
"I decline to share my successes with any mere man," asserted Elfreda grandly. "Not that I have been what you might call entirely slighted. Wait until I tell you the sad story of my one love affair."
"This is vastly interesting," mused Miriam.
"Tell us about it this minute." Arline brightened visibly. Elfreda's promised tale of tragedy was sure to turn out comedy.
"Let me see," began Elfreda with a fine air of reminiscence. "We met last year in a corridor of the law school, I was making a wild rush down and he was making an equally wild rush up. Result, we collided. Just like that," Elfreda brought her hands smartly together to illustrate the force of that momentous collision. "I wasn't overcome with joy at this slam-bang introduction. I had seen him often from afar and never admired him. He was at least three inches shorter than yours truly, had a snub nose and freckles. All of which was not romantic.
"That was the beginning; but not the ending. The next time I met him, he claimed beaming acquaintance. After that he pursued me madly. He was always bobbing up in the most unexpected places. It gave me a feeling of being haunted. At first I bore it like a martyr. I hated to hurt his feelings. After a while it began to get on my nerves.