agape, eyes wide-open, and stared--frankly, unequivocally stared.... Then
they went to meet her; and both tried to shake hands at once; then both
tried to pick up her travelling case at once; and they bumped their
heads.

For the first half mile of the drive to the shore, they sat dumb,
thinking with sore strainings of mind for things to say, and rejecting
each because it didn't seem to be good enough. Finally Tom Blake ventured
a remark anent the weather. No harm came to him. So Jack Schuyler
ventured one about the wind. He also went scatheless.

At length Tom Blake, looking at the fresh, clean beauty of the girl on
the other seat, forgot himself, and voiced, in the moment of his
temporary aberration, that which was in the two adolescent male minds.

"Doggone, but you've grown pretty, Kate!" and then blushed.

She blushed, too, and looked at Jack Schuyler. At which he blushed and
almost carromed the trap against a telegraph pole. Whereat they all
laughed. And from then on, they were themselves.

They were met by her mother at "The Lawns," and by Dr. DeLancey. Dr.
DeLancey was not bashful. He pinched her glowing cheek and looked her
over, critically.

"A positive symposium of pulchritude," he declared. "I wish I were fifty
or seventy-five years younger, by Jove! If you two boys let any rank
outsider take her out of the family, you'll have me to reckon with. Yes,
by Jove, you will! And you'll find that while I may be a poor fencer, and
a worse boxer, I'm still a good spanker!"