Page:Glitter (1926).pdf/258

 "I'll just do that little thing," Jock answered lightly, hating him.

They threaded their way along the narrow aisle, walking single-file. And this happened:

As they neared the table occupied by the girl in red and the man named Perry Loomis, Jock saw Loomis get to his unsteady feet and half lean, half pitch forward, as though he would seize his vis-à-vis in his arms. The girl shrank away from him violently, so violently that she lost her balance and went, chair and all, over backward, with an instant's fetching flash of shapely little red silk legs.

"Whup!" said Jock, and halting, stooped to assist her. "Say, did you hurt yourself"

His voice died out.

An exquisite girl. Her face was delicate, pastel-pink, her mouth a coral atom, her brown hair sheeny, waved to a deep sweep over one temple, her figure soft and round to the touch of his hands. A flower of a girl, sweet, just-bloomed. . . . But Jock was not admiring so much as he was puzzling. Except for her eyes he would have said he had never seen her before. But those eyes. . . bright brown, with upcurled starry lashes. . . . They plumbed deep, to a forgotten episode. A little girl, no taller than this little girl, who had come to a prom at college ages and ages ago, and cried, and asked him to tell her how to be popular, how to be "just like the rest of these girls." And he had advised her, with all the wisdom he could muster. . ..

"It is," he said aloud, "it's little Cecily Graves!" And added under his breath, "And drunker than a monkey."

The New Year crashed in—the year they were to have greeted together because it was to be their year.