Page:Temple Bailey--The Gay cockade.djvu/17

 "She wouldn't even have a honeymoon"—Jimmie's arm was around her; "she brought me here, and got this room ready the first thing."

"Well, he mustn't be wasting time," said Elise, "must he? Jimniie's rather wonderful, isn't he?"

They seemed a pair of babies as they stood there together. Elise had on a childish one-piece pink frock, with sleeves above the elbow, and an organdie sash. Yet, intuitively, the truth came to me—she was ages older than Jimmie in spite of her twenty years to his twenty-four. Here was no Juliet, flaming to the moon—no mistress whose steed would gallop by wind-swept roads to midnight trysts. Here was, rather, the cool blood that had sacrificed a honeymoon—and, oh, to honeymoon with Jimmie Harding!—for the sake of an ambitious future.

She was telling us about it. "We can always have a honeymoon, Jimmie and I. Some day, when he is famous, we'll have it. But now we must not."

"I picked out the place"—Jimmie was eager—"a dip in the hills, and big pines And then Elise wouldn't."

We went in to lunch after that. The table was lovely and the food delicious. There was batter-bread, I remember, and an omelette, and peas from the garden.

Duncan Street and I talked all the way home of 11