sunstroke. Then I sat down in the broiling sun and chaperoned Bettina
until luncheon.




III


Jasper took dinner with us that night. He came across the lawn, freshly
shaved and in clean white flannels, just as dinner was announced, and
said he had seen a chocolate cake cooling on the kitchen porch and that
it was a sort of unwritten social law that when the Baileys happened to
have a chocolate cake at dinner they had him also.

There seemed to be nothing to object to in this. Evidently he was right,
for we found his place laid at the table. The meal was quite cheerful,
although Jasper ate the way some people play the piano, by touch, with
his eyes on Bettina. And he gave no evidence at dessert of a fondness
for chocolate cake sufficient to justify a standing invitation.

After dinner we went out on the veranda, and under cover of showing me a
sunset Jasper took me round the corner of the house. Once there, he
entirely forgot the sunset.

"Miss Lizzie," he began at once, "what have I done to you to have you
treat me like this?"

"I?" I asked, amazed.