Page:Flaming Youth black on red.pdf/332

 328

FLAMING

YOUTH

show ‘em whether she was ashamed or afraid to meef | Monty! After pervading the town for a while she would | run over for her daily chatter with Jimmie jams. Jimmie

was growing very frail and weary and had a leak of eager, anxious expectancy, these days. Pat thought that she knew what he was waiting for. Te eee void in her life when Jimmie got his release.

Emerging from the fruit shop where she hoped to find an avocado pear for him, she saw a man standing on the earh

His back was turmed, buat there was that in the

set of his shoulders, the slender grace of the figure, the poise of the head which startled her heart to ane great throb of excited delight. Here, indeed, was relief from dull days, food for that greed of excitement, of “thrill.” which life had not yet begun to sate for her. “Mist-er Scott He whirled about. His face lighted up. Taking the

hand which she held out, he said, with the old, mocking half-lft of the brows: “Still that, Pat?” “What are you doing in Dorrisdale?™

“Tre just been telephoning Miss Patricia Fentriss. “She's out.” “Se I was informed. I begin te suspect it’s true.” Both laughed. Pat, quite charmed with herself for the

light and easy manner in which she was carrying off this potentially difficult situation, committed the error of leeking up into his eyes. There she read a hunger and a want that made her avert her gaze. She sought hurriedly for somethingto say. “I didn’t even know that you were in this country”

“J wasn’t until last might."

He had fallen into step

beside her.

“I was going to the Jameses’,” she remarked a little lamely. “I go there every morning.”