controversy between them as to which had first fallen in love with the
other. As a matter of history, honors were even.
He first saw her during a thunder storm, in the paddock at the races,
wearing a rain-coat with the collar turned up and a Panama hat with the
brim turned down. She was talking, in terms of affectionate familiarity,
with Cuthbert’s two-year-old, The Scout. The Scout had just lost a
race by a nose, and Dolly was holding the nose against her cheek and
comforting him. The two made a charming picture, and, as Carter stumbled
upon it and halted, the race-horse lowered his eyes and seemed to say:
“Wouldn’t YOU throw a race for this?” And the girl raised her eyes and
seemed to say: “What a nice-looking, bright-looking young man! Why don’t
I know who you are?”
So, Carter ran to find Cuthbert, and told him The Scout had gone lame.
When, on their return, Miss Ingram refused to loosen her hold on The
Scout’s nose, Cuthbert apologetically mumbled Carter’s name, and in some
awe Miss Ingram’s name, and then, to his surprise, both young people
lost interest in The Scout, and wandered away together into the rain.
After an hour, when they parted at the club stand, for which Carter
could not afford a ticket, he asked wistfully: “Do you often come
racing?” and Miss Ingram said: “Do you mean, am I coming to-morrow?”
“I do!” said Carter.
“Then, why didn’t you say that?” inquired Miss Ingram. “Otherwise I
mightn’t have come. I have the Holland House coach for to-morrow, and,
if you’ll join us, I’ll save a place for you, and you can sit in our
box.
“I’ve lived so long abroad,” she explained, “that I’m afraid of not
being simple and direct like other American girls. Do you think I’ll get
on here at home?”
“If you get on with every one else as well as you’ve got on with me,”
said Carter morosely, “I will shoot myself.”
Miss Ingram smiled thoughtfully. “At eleven, then,” she said, “in front
of the Holland House.”
Carter walked away with a flurried, heated suffocation around his heart
and a joyous lightness in his feet. Of the first man he met he demanded,
“Who was the beautiful girl in the rain-coat?” And when the man told
him, Carter left him without speaking. For she was quite the richest
girl in America. But the next day that fault seemed to distress her so
little that Carter, also, refused to allow it to rest on his conscience,
and they were very happy. And each saw that they were happy because they
were together.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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