Page:Arthur Stringer - Twin Tales.djvu/149

Rh her eyes, for Teddie was not habitually lachrymose. But before she found that mood conquered and killed she was unable to resist the temptation to let her bobbed head sink wearily into the crooked arm which rested on one end of the none-too-orderly cherrywood table.

"Oh, I say, you know; this sort of thing won't do!" ejaculated her obviously disturbed visitor. "It won't do, my dear," he repeated as he patted what was left of the bobbed hair with his fatherly old hand.

Teddie, however, was without the spirit either to agree or disagree with that statement. And her unhappiness so melted the heart of the benignant old Commodore that he took her hand and stroked it as he talked to her. And so gratified was he to see even the ghost of a grim little smile about her lips that a paternally commiserative impulse prompted him to stoop down and kiss the magnolia-white cheek.

So intent, indeed, had he been on his contemplation of this white cheek, faintly shot through with its shell-pink, that the door had opened and a third person had