``I haven't been with you for two months. Be a good girl, and do some missionary work. Slumming is the fashion, you know. Come and cheer me up. It's been fiendishly stupid without you.'' She laughed at his sincerely gloomy voice. ``Come,'' he urged; ``we'll have dinner in the back parlor. Do you remember that awful dinner-party?'' He laughed as he spoke, but--being 'sure';--in the darkness of the shabby hack he looked at her intently. . . . Oh, if David were only out of the way! ``Remember it? I should think I did!'' There was no telltale flicker on her smooth cheek; even in the gloom of the carriage he could see that the dark amber of her eyes brimmed over with amusement, and the dimple deepened entrancingly. ``How could I forget it? Didn't I wear my first long dress to that dinner-party--oh, and my six-button gloves?'' ``I--'' said Blair, and paused. ``I remember other things than the gloves and long dress, Elizabeth.'' (Why shouldn't he say as much as that? He was certain of himself, and David was certain of her, so why not speak of what it gave him a rapturous pang to remember?) But at his words the color whipped into her cheek; her clear brows drew together into a slight frown. ``How is your mother, Blair?'' she said coldly. "Oh, very well. Can you imagine Mother anything but well? The heat has nearly killed me, but Mother is iron." "She's perfectly wonderful!" "Yes; wonderful woman," he agreed carelessly. "Elizabeth, promise you'll come to-morrow evening?" "Cherry-pie would think it was horrid in me not to stay with her, when I've been away so long." "I think it's horrid in you not to stay with me." She laughed; then sighed. "David is working awfully hard, Blair." "Darn David!" he retorted, laughing. "So am I, if that's any reason for your giving a man your society." "You! You couldn't work hard to save your life." "I could, if I had somebody to work for, as David has." "You'd better get somebody," she said gaily. "I don't want any second-bests," he declared. "Donkey!" Elizabeth said good-naturedly. But she was a little surprised, for whatever else Blair was, he was not stupid--and such talk is always stupid. That it had its root in anything deeper than chaffing never occurred to her. They were at her own door by this time, and Blair, helping her out of the carriage, looked into her face, and his veins ran hot. The next morning, when he went to see Nannie, he was absorbed and irritable. "Girls are queer," he told her; "they marry all kinds of men. But I'll tell you one thing: David is the last man for a girl like Elizabeth. He is perfectly incapable of understanding her." That was the first day that he did not assure himself that he "was not in love." CHAPTER XVII