"By Jove!" Ellery exclaimed, moving uneasily. "When you sniff this air
it makes you want to stand on tiptoe on a hilltop and shout. And when
you look at these colors, they are too brilliant to be true."
"Even you, you old conservative slow-poking duffer!" cried Dick. "This
is the land to wake you up. It calls 'harder--harder!' every-day."
"It's a different kind of beauty from what I'm used to." Ellery sobered
down again. "I've been trying to analyze it ever since I came West. It
wouldn't appeal to the tired or the world-weary. Its charm is for the
vigorous and the confident and the hopeful--for the young."
"For us, my boy," Dick said.
"At Madeline's," as Dick called it, with that obliviousness of the older
generation shown by the younger, Norris felt as they entered, as he had
felt at Mrs. Percival's, that he was in a candid, human, refined home,
with a full appreciation of the finer sides of life. They passed through
the drawing-room and by long glass doors to the broad piazza, with every
invitation to laziness, easy chairs, cushions, magazines, all made
fragrant by a huge jar of roses and another of sweet peas. And there was
not too much. The veranda in turn gave upon a wide expanse of green that
stretched steeply down to that cool wet line where the lapping waters
met the lawn. The trees whispered softly around. Every prospect was
pleasing, and only man was vile; for there was another man, sitting in
the most comfortable of chairs and engaging Madeline all to himself, as
he contentedly sipped the cup of tea that he had taken from her hand.
This other man, whose name was Davison, was making himself agreeable
after the fashion of his kind, a fashion quite familiar to every girl
who has been so unfortunate as to get a reputation, however little
deserved, for superior brains.
"Afternoon," he said, "I didn't suppose any other fellows except myself
were brave enough, to call on Miss Elton. I hear she's so awfully
clever, you know. Taken degrees and all that sort of thing. Give you my
word it comes out in everything around her. Why, this very napkin she
gave me has a Greek border. Everything has to be classic now."
"Not everything, Mr. Davison," said Madeline indulgently. "You know I am
delighted to have you here." She turned abruptly to the new-comers as
though she had already had a surfeit of this subject. It is a pleasant
thing to have had a good education, but one does not care to spend one's
time thinking about it, any more than about how much money there is in
one's pocket.
"You had a fine ride out?" Madeline asked.
"Great!" answered Dick. "To be young, on a summer day, seated in a good
motor with a thoroughly tamed and domesticated gasoline engine, and to
be coming to see you--what more could we ask of the gods?"