David chewed this bitter fact in silence; then he said, "I
thought you and Elizabeth were kind of off at dinner. You didn't
talk to each other at all. I thought you were both huffy; and
instead of that--" David paused.

"That damned dinner!" Blair said, dropping his love-affair for
his grievance. Blair's toga virilis, assumed in that hot moment
in the hall, was profanity of sorts. "David, I'm going to clear
out. I can't stand this sort of thing. I'll go and live at a
hotel till I go to college; I'll--"

"Thought you were going to get married?" David interrupted him
viciously.

Blair looked at him, and suddenly understood,--David was jealous!
"Gorry!" he said blankly. He was honestly dismayed. "Look here,"
he began, "I didn't know that _you_--"

"I don't know what you're talking about," David broke in
contemptuously; "if you think _I_ care, one way or the
other, you're mistaken. It's nothing to me. 'By"; and he turned
on his heel.

It was a hot July afternoon; the sun-baked street along which
they had been walking was deep with black dust and full of the
clamor of traffic. Four big gray Flemish horses, straining
against their breastplates, were hauling a dray loaded with
clattering iron rods; the sound, familiar enough to any Mercer
boy, seemed to David at that moment intolerable. "I'll get out of