Page:Jackson Gregory--joyous trouble maker.djvu/160

144 that tingling sense of standing at those magic doors which open to give view of the port of adventure, that breathless eagerness which had been absent in past financial losses, was a most persistent companion to-day. … Every time that she found her lips twitching she frowned formidably.

In Steele's attitude as she remembered it there had been more than a polite hint of contempt for a pale handed hot house lady; she wondered, among a score of other considerations, if he would be observant enough to note how these latter days outdoors during which she had been abroad in the dawn and had moved homeward through the sweet dusk, had put a warmer tone into her cheeks? If he would notice how she came alone, on horseback. That she rode well, as well in fact as any girl of the sort of which he approved? Not that it mattered the least little bit in the world whether big impudent Bill Steele approved or not … she just wondered, that was all!

And yet … though Miss Corliss herself did not seek to analyse everything … it was because of what Bill Steele would think that she changed her first plan as to the mode of her arrival. She would go alone and he would know that she was no cowardly little thing; she would ride all the way on horse back, and he would know that, too, realizing that she did not require Parker and a car everywhere she went.

"I am going for a ride, Delia," she had told her maid lightly. "Since I may go on into Summit City I don't want to look like Farmer Brown's daughter."

Bill Steele had asked her how old she was: "About