The Adventures of Sally | Page 9

gaiety, had brought her to a halt. Here she could have stayed
indefinitely, but the voice of America was calling her back. Gerald had
written to say that "The Primrose Way" was to be produced in Detroit,
preliminary to its New York run, so soon that, if she wished to see the
opening, she must return at once. A scrappy, hurried, unsatisfactory
letter, the letter of a busy man: but one that Sally could not ignore. She
was leaving Roville to-morrow.
To-day, however, was to-day: and she sat and watched the bathers with
a familiar feeling of peace, revelling as usual in the still novel sensation
of having nothing to do but bask in the warm sunshine and listen to the
faint murmur of the little waves.
But, if there was one drawback, she had discovered, to a morning on
the Roville plage, it was that you had a tendency to fall asleep: and this
is a degrading thing to do so soon after breakfast, even if you are on a
holiday. Usually, Sally fought stoutly against the temptation, but to-day
the sun was so warm and the whisper of the waves so insinuating that
she had almost dozed off, when she was aroused by voices close at
hand. There were many voices on the beach, both near and distant, but
these were talking English, a novelty in Roville, and the sound of the

familiar tongue jerked Sally back from the borders of sleep. A few feet
away, two men had seated themselves on the sand.
From the first moment she had set out on her travels, it had been one of
Sally's principal amusements to examine the strangers whom chance
threw in her way and to try by the light of her intuition to fit them out
with characters and occupations: nor had she been discouraged by an
almost consistent failure to guess right. Out of the corner of her eye she
inspected these two men.
The first of the pair did not attract her. He was a tall, dark man whose
tight, precise mouth and rather high cheeks bones gave him an
appearance vaguely sinister. He had the dusky look of the clean-shaven
man whose life is a perpetual struggle with a determined beard. He
certainly shaved twice a day, and just as certainly had the self-control
not to swear when he cut himself. She could picture him smiling nastily
when this happened.
"Hard," diagnosed Sally. "I shouldn't like him. A lawyer or something,
I think."
She turned to the other and found herself looking into his eyes. This
was because he had been staring at Sally with the utmost intentness
ever since his arrival. His mouth had opened slightly. He had the air of
a man who, after many disappointments, has at last found something
worth looking at.
"Rather a dear," decided Sally.
He was a sturdy, thick-set young man with an amiable, freckled face
and the reddest hair Sally had ever seen. He had a square chin, and at
one angle of the chin a slight cut. And Sally was convinced that,
however he had behaved on receipt of that wound, it had not been with
superior self-control.
"A temper, I should think," she meditated. "Very quick, but soon over.
Not very clever, I should say, but nice."

She looked away, finding his fascinated gaze a little embarrassing.
The dark man, who in the objectionably competent fashion which, one
felt, characterized all his actions, had just succeeded in lighting a
cigarette in the teeth of a strong breeze, threw away the match and
resumed the conversation, which had presumably been interrupted by
the process of sitting down.
"And how is Scrymgeour?" he inquired.
"Oh, all right," replied the young man with red hair absently. Sally was
looking straight in front of her, but she felt that his eyes were still busy.
"I was surprised at his being here. He told me he meant to stay in
Paris."
There was a slight pause. Sally gave the attentive poodle a piece of
nougat.
"I say," observed the red-haired young man in clear, penetrating tones
that vibrated with intense feeling, "that's the prettiest girl I've seen in
my life!"

2

At this frank revelation of the red-haired young man's personal
opinions, Sally, though considerably startled, was not displeased. A
broad-minded girl, the outburst seemed to her a legitimate comment on
a matter of public interest. The young man's companion, on the other
hand, was unmixedly shocked.
"My dear fellow!" he ejaculated.
"Oh, it's all right," said the red-haired young man, unmoved. "She can't
understand. There isn't a bally soul in this dashed place that can speak a
word of English. If I didn't happen to remember a few odd bits of

French, I should have starved by this time. That