"Yes," suggested the girl.

Another pause.

"I hope you're not--disappointed, Elice."

Still another pause, appreciable, though shorter than before.

"No; I'm not disappointed," replied the girl then. At last Armstrong had
glanced up and, without looking himself, the listener knew as well as
though he had seen that the speaker was smiling steadily. "I'm not
disappointed in the least, Steve."

CHAPTER IV

UNCERTAINTY

It was ten minutes after three on the following afternoon when Stephen
Armstrong, in the lightest of flannels and jauntiest of butterfly ties,
strolled up the tree-lined avenue and with an air of comfortable
proprietorship wandered in at the Gleason cottage. A movable sprinkler
was playing busily on the front lawn and, observing that the surrounding
sod was well soaked, with lazy deliberation he shifted it to a new
quarter. As he approached the house a mother wren flitted away before his
face, and at the new suggestion he stood peering up at the angle under
the eaves for the nest that he knew was near about. Once, standing there
with the hot afternoon sun beating down upon him, he whistled in
imitation of the tiny bird's call; nothing developing, he mounted the
steps and pulled the old-fashioned knocker familiarly.

There was no immediate response and he pulled again; without waiting for
an answer, he dropped into the ever-convenient hammock stretched beside
the door and swung back and forth luxuriously. Unconsciously, and for the
same reason that a bird sings--because it is carelessly oblivious of
anything save the happiness of the moment--he began whistling softly to
himself: without definite time or metre, subconsciously improvising.
Perhaps a dozen times he swung back and forth; then the whistling
ceased.

"Anything doing at this restaurant this afternoon, Elice?" he plunged
without preface. An expansive smile made up for the lack of conventional
greeting. "I'm as hungry as those little wrens I hear cheeping up there
somewhere."

The smile was contagious and the girl returned it unconsciously.

"I believe you're always hungry, Steve Armstrong," she commented.

"I know it. I was born that way."

"And you never grew up."

"Physically, yes, unfortunately. Otherwise--I'm fighting to the last
ditch. I believe about three of those cookies you make--and, by the way,
they're much better than mother used to manufacture--will fill the void.
Don't you hear that cheeping?"

The girl he