"You damned cynic," observed Voucher affectionately.
"Somebody," said Fleetwood, "insists that she doubled up poor Siward."
"She never met Siward until she was engaged to Howard," remarked Voucher.
"Well?"
"Oh, don't you consider that enough to squelch the story?"
"Engaged girls," mused Alderdene, "never double up except at Bridge."
"Everybody has been or is in love with Sylvia Landis," said Voucher, "and it's a man's own fault if he's hit. Once she did it, innocently enough, and enjoyed it, never realising that it hurt a man to be doubled up."
Fleetwood yawned again and said: "She can have me to-morrow. But she won't. She's tired of the sport. Any girl would get enough with the pack at her heels day in and day out. Besides she's done for--unless she looses Quarrier and starts on a duke-hunt over in Blinky's country! … Is anybody on for a sail? Is anybody on for anything? No? Oh, very well. Shove that decanter north by west, Billy."
This was characteristic of the dog-days at Shotover. The dog-days in town were very different; the city threw open the parks to the poor at night; horses fell dead in the streets; pallid urchins, stripped naked, splashed and rolled and screeched in the basin of the City Hall fountain under the indifferent eyes of the police.
As for Plank he was too busy to know what the thermometer was about; he had no time for anything outside of his own particular business except to go every day to the big, darkened house in lower Fifth Avenue where the days had been hard on Siward and the nights harder.
Siward, however, could walk now, using his crutches still, but often stopping to gently test his left foot and see how much weight he was able to bear on it--even taking a tentative step or two without crutch support. He drove when he thought it prudent to use the horses in the heat, usually very early in the morning, though sometimes at night with Plank when the latter had time to run his touring-car through the park and out into the Bronx or Westchester for a breath of air.
But Plank wanted him to go away, get out of the city for his convalescence, and Siward flatly declined, demanding that Plank permit him to do his share in the fight against the Inter-County people.
And Plank, utterly unable to persuade him, and the more hampered because of his anxiety about Siward--though that young man did not know it--wore himself out providing Siward with such employment in the matter as would lightly occupy him without doing any good to the enemy.