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Page 1
LITTLE EVE EDGARTON
CHAPTER I
"But you live like such a fool--of course you're bored!" drawled the
Older Man, rummaging listlessly through his pockets for the
ever-elusive match.
"Well, I like your nerve!" protested the Younger Man with unmistakable
asperity.
"Do you--really?" mocked the Older Man, still smiling very faintly.
For a few minutes then both men resumed their cigars, staring
blinkishly out all the while from their dark green piazza corner into
the dazzling white tennis courts that gleamed like so many slippery
pine planks in the afternoon glare and heat. The month was August, the
day typically handsome, typically vivid, typically caloric.
It was the Younger Man who recovered his conversational interest
first. "So you think I'm a fool?" he resumed at last quite abruptly.
"Oh, no--no! Not for a minute!" denied the Older Man. "Why, my dear
sir, I never even implied that you were a fool! All I said was that
you--lived like a fool!"
Starting to be angry, the Younger Man laughed instead. "You're
certainly rather an amusing sort of chap," he acknowledged
reluctantly.
A gleam of real pride quickened most ingenuously in the Older Man's
pale blue eyes. "Why, that's just the whole point of my argument," he
beamed. "Now--you look interesting. But you aren't! And I--don't look
interesting. But it seems that I am!"
"You--you've got a nerve!" reverted the Younger Man.
Altogether serenely the Older Man began to rummage again through all
his pockets. "Thank you for your continuous compliments," he mused.
"Thank you, I say. Thank you--very much. Now for the very first time,
sir, it's beginning to dawn on me just why you have honored me with
so much of your company--the past three or four days. I truly believe
that you like me! Eh? But up to last Monday, if I remember correctly,"
he added drily, "it was that showy young Philadelphia crowd that was
absorbing the larger part of your--valuable attention? Eh? Wasn't it?"
"What in thunder are you driving at?" snapped the Younger Man. "What
are you trying to string me about, anyway? What's the harm if I did
say that I wished to glory I'd never come to this blasted hotel? Of
all the stupid people! Of all the stupid places! Of all the
stupid--everything!"
"The mountains here are considered quite remarkable by some,"
suggested the Older Man blandly.
"Mountains?" snarled the Younger Man. "Mountains? Do you think for a
moment that a fellow like me comes to a God-forsaken spot like this
for the sake of mountains?"
A trifle noisily the Older Man jerked his chair around and, slouching
down into his shabby gray clothes, with his hands thrust deep into his
pockets, his feet shoved out before him, sat staring at his companion.
Furrowed abruptly from brow to chin with myriad infinitesimal wrinkles
of perplexity, his lean, droll face looked suddenly almost monkeyish
in its intentness.
"What does a fellow like you come to a place like this for?" he asked
bluntly.
"Why--tennis," conceded the Younger Man. "A little tennis. And golf--a
little golf. And--and--"
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