Jewel Weed

Ellery looked around at his fellow passengers, contentedly munching

their peanuts and conversing in broad English flavored with Norse. They

were a good-natured assemblage, who choked and snorted and chuckled and

whinnied in their laughter. Norris' eyes were caught by one girl,

conspicuously because plainly dressed. As she turned her profile, he

glanced at Dick. Dick too was staring at her, and even while Ellery eyed

him, he raised his hat and bowed gravely, with a deferential air that

became him.

"So," exclaimed Norris under his breath, "that was why we tore like

madmen to catch this boat!"

"It would have been a pity to lose it," Dick responded innocently. "It

is a delicious bit of scenery from here to the fort. I wanted you to see

it."

"Pink and white scenery with yellow curls," jeered Ellery.

Dick made no reply and Ellery went on.

"She has a young man already. You can't go and take her away from him.

That wouldn't be playing fair."

"The man with her is an oaf. He has a loose mouth that wabbles when he

opens it to pick his teeth."

"So you think that though you may not snatch her bodily, you may make

her wish to be with you instead of with him, and that the wish will lie

fallow in her heart. Dick, you are a student of human nature," Ellery

said, half amused, half irritated.

"I dare say he is a gentleman at heart. Oafs always are."

"What you really do," Ellery continued, "is to make her uncomfortable

and conscious of his clothes and his sprawl. She flushed when she saw

you, and she has been sitting stiffly ever since."

"Oh, drop it, Norris."

Ellery shrugged his shoulders.

"I don't know what you want to do it for," he said. "You're a queer

combination, Dick, of the whole-souled reformer and the abject goose."

"Nothing inconsistent about being a philanthropist and a philogynist. By

Jove! She's pretty in her malaise, pink, and pecking like a little

wren at her oaf. Ellery, it's a brute of a shame that such as she should

be cast before him--she, a fine lacy creature who shows her breeding

through it all."

"How much are you in earnest?"

"There you go again!" Dick turned on his friend with a kind of

exasperation. "You belong to that period of social development when they

ask a man's intentions if he looks twice at the girl he dances with. I

don't have to be in earnest, thank Heaven! But when I get a chance to

look at anything so lovely as that girl, I mean to do it, just as I look

at a flower or a picture. I don't mean to lose all the delicious froth

of life. Do you happen to know her first name?"