Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/38

 Miss Boland contemplated with frankly estimating glance the lithe figure and the now alert countenance of Mr. Henry Harrington, and then allowed her blue eyes to kindle and her long red lips to assume curves of humor. "He certainly has slandered you, else my eyes deceive me," she assured, her clear orbs looking at the moment as if they could never have deceived her in all her life. "I see no sign of decrepit age at all. Don't mind; Charlie always was a dumbbell."

Somehow it did Henry a ridiculous amount of good to hear Charlie called a dumbbell by this beautiful creature—yes, she was beautiful; he conceded that—and himself by inference an alert and intelligent person. Her fingers had clasped his in a perfectly cordial American handshake and he was taking in the details of the picture, noting especially a certain exquisite taste which manifested itself in the perfect harmony of her sport rig.

Very chic, she was, all in white, from the dashing brim of the silk sport hat to the sheen of sculptured ankles and the dainty toes of spotless kid. A peaches-and-cream complexion contrasted rather joyously with masses of wavy dark hair exhibiting a faint bronze tinge.

The next observation Harrington recorded was the perfection of detail within this ensemble; not a glossy hair awry, that fetching hat not one degree aslant from its most insouciant angle; not a hint of disharmony anywhere in that immaculate exterior which Miss Billie Boland presented to him—so completely gratifying to his every sense of the esthetic that the skeptical young man was rather knocked out over having encountered it so unexpectedly.