arkling gaze
caught and held Flavia's as, startled, she raised her head. "I was
telling Miss Rose that I must get rid of this road dust. But I wasn't
thinking of eating, then."

Scarlet rushed over Flavia's face and neck. As Corrie took gay
possession of Gerard and bore him off, she sank back in her chair,
winding her fingers hard into the embroidery. Not the omnivorous
Isabel's, this! There was nothing to fear, ever again. She had the
perfect certainty that Gerard would complete that purpose of his the
next time they met. And they would meet in an hour. Suddenly she caught
up the drowsy kitten and hid her face against the soft living toy.

They did meet in an hour, but it was on the way to dinner, and the
exuberant Corrie held the reins of conversation.

"I've discharged Dean," was his first announcement. "Take those oysters
away from in front of me, Perkins; I want my soup right now and a lot of
it--about a gallon. Never mind anyone else; I haven't had anything but
sandwiches since breakfast."

"Discharged your mechanician one day before the race?" marvelled Gerard.
"What will you do?"

"Oh, I'm going out to the garage after dinner to hire him over again.
He's used to it. Now, I suppose that if you fired Jack Rupert, you'd
never see him again."

"I certainly would not."

"Well, that's the difference. I'm afraid of Rupert, myself. Dean hasn't
any dignity."

"Neither have you," observed Isabel bitingly. "You're worse than Dean. I
saw you kick Frederick the Great all across the veranda yesterday, then
lead him around the kitchen and feed him porterhouse steak."

"That was remorse," Mr. Rose suggested, coolly amused. He looked across
at Gerard, as at the only other grown person present. "You'd best take a
porterhouse steak to Dean when you go, Corwin B. It's a fine temper
you've got."

"All right, sir, if you say it. I guess Dean would eat a porterhouse, if
he isn't a Great Dane puppy. But I saw a man to-day in a temper that
makes anything I ever did read like a chapter from Patient Griselda."

"He must have been a lunatic," Isabel kindly inferred.

Her cousin put his elbows on the table and contemplated her with mock
reproach; looking rather nearer his sixteenth year than his nineteenth
in this mood of effervescent gayety. Ever since his interview with
Gerard, in the garage that afternoon, his high spirits had been
unquenchable.

"You're cross, Isabel," he stated frankly. "Where did you get the
grouch?