Page:The Star in the Window.pdf/214

204 responding, as she observed with fluttering heart a familiar figure letting himself out of the car. "My people all away. Thought I might find somebody alive out here," he explained, approaching Gerard Park and shaking hands with him. "How are you?"

"It's Chad Booth," Gerard Park announced to the group on the dark veranda. "You know Doctor Booth, don't you, Katherine, and Constance?"

The two older Park sisters replied, "Oh, yes indeed. Good evening, Doctor Booth!"

And Gerard went on, "Do you know Miss Hills, my aunt, Chad? And my father? And—let's see—it's so dark here—Miss Quigley over there by the railing, and next to her kid-sister Peggy, and Miss Jerome, and Mrs. Remington, and Tommy Blake—you know Tommy?" (Oh, yes indeed, he knew Tommy) "and over where you see that swarm of cigarette glow-worms, a dozen or so, more or less, hungry men from Cambridge Jimmie picked up on his way out. Well, how are you, Chad? Sit down."

Reba moved her chair back a bit into a deeper shadow. She was glowing all over with excitement. Think of it! Meeting him socially like this! Chadwick Booth! She! Think of her, Rebecca Jerome, mixing up familiarly with people of this sort.

She watched Dr. Booth sit down in the chair somebody shoved up for him, accept a cigarette somebody else offered, and light it in his fine manner with as keen delight as ever she had watched and admired an actor on the stage. What a gentleman he was! How clearly he enunciated the few formal sentences he addressed to Miss Quigley beside whom he was seated. Later, how well he expressed himself to Mr. Park on the