Page:Dorothy Canfield - Rough-hewn.djvu/241

 bench at the side, under a purple silk parasol, her long, full, white skirts frilling out in a plaited cone, her pretty, fluffy, brown hair arranged in a high pompadour, which stayed impeccable as the tennis-playing girls grew hot and red, their hair straggling in straight wisps across their shining wet foreheads.

Had Neale ever thought he scorned girls who sat cool and dressed-up on a bench while others played tennis? As soon as the set was over, he went to sit beside her. She glanced at him out of her gray eyes and looked away again. Neale's pulse beat more quickly and he looked hard at the curve of her cheek. Then they began to talk. Before she went in to lunch, she had told him with a wistful note in her voice, that she was glad she'd met him, because most of the people at the hotel bored her so. Neale answered (the truth striking him for the first time), that most of the people bored him too.

If other people were what bored them, they certainly must have been free from ennui for the next few days, for they saw little of any one but each other. Neale's days and evenings were good or bad, according to the extent of his success in monopolizing Miss Austin. On the whole the evenings were the best, the evenings when they sat in a far corner of the hotel piazza and compared notes about their views on life and literature. Miss Austin paid Neale the compliment he most appreciated. She affected to consider him as well-read as she was—what did he think of Meredith, and Ibsen? She discussed Bernard Shaw and "The Second Mrs. Tanqueray." Neale had to trust to copious bluffing: to confide heavily in his taciturnity, letting her run on, till she expressed opinions tangible enough for him to agree with her.

The climax of the season was the fancy dress dance at the Prospect House. Everybody went; Billy in a blanket, woodchuck skins and turkey feathers considered himself a passable Uncas. Neale who had caught the early morning train up to West Adams and the milk train back, wore his football suit, with his white sweater like a cloak, the arms tied under his chin—hot but very becoming.