Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/60

50 never appeared together in public unless it couldn't be helped.

For the first time in my life I was lonesome, lonesome for something which I couldn't name and couldn't understand. But Bud was always talking of the future, when we came together, and of the deep heel we'd have when we crossed the pond. It was at Fort Pierce that he first asked me to marry him, though he did it again, three days later, at Palm Beach. I was able to laugh at him, and accuse him of getting mealy. That seemed to hurt him. It at least put the lid down on the marriage talk for the rest of the winter. But Bud was good to me, as good as any man, whether he happened to be a diamond thief or a churchwarden, could be to a woman. He still expected me to do my spotter work, of course, and do it well. Sometimes it wasn't easy to get away with, but Bud, even from the distance, watched me like a hawk and never ventured a move which he thought would make it harder for me.

I don't like to say that Bud went sour that winter, but my refusal to marry him left him so unsettled that he did the best sloughing of the season, sometimes making three stations in one night. He even jimmied his way into a stucco château full of King Charles spaniels, and, take my word for it, no ordi-