"Bill is right," I said, "as always. I think I'll not go, Mercedes, if you and Wright don't mind."
"Not at all," she said generously, "only," and here her voice grew wistful, "only the time is getting so short, Mavis. In two days I'll be going to Havana for the Mendez dance--and to stay. And then, before we know it, you will be going home again."
"But you're following shortly," I reminded her.
"Won't your Mother consider lending you to me for a while this summer?" I asked. "I shall be--" and almost I had said "so very lonely" before I thought. I stopped.
"Shall be what?" asked Mercedes, coming up the steps and dropping to my feet, on a crimson cushion.
"So very glad to see you," I answered, and truly.
"That's not very nice of you," I accused her.
"I didn't mean--what you said," she hastened to explain. "I only meant--I wonder if Wright would wait over and go up with us? It is so dull," she went on, "just travelling with the family, and Father likes him so much. What do you think, Mavis?"
Mavis thought that without Wright's pleasant, obtuse presence, that homeward voyage would be a nightmare. But she did not say so.
"I'm sure he'd love to," I answered, smiling into the pretty, eager face, "especially if you ask him--very nicely."
Mercedes laid her flushed cheek for a minute against my knees. Through the thin fabric of my gown I could feel the warmth of it.
"You like Wright, don't you?" she asked, a little anxiously. "And he's Billy's best friend--?"
I put my hand on her smooth, heavy hair. A scent, as of youth and flowers and sunshine came to me from the polished coils of it. Wright was a very fortunate young person.
"I'm very fond of him, Silly," said I, "and Bill adores him. There, is that recommendation enough?"
She jumped up, in a whirl of skirts, and kissed me impetuously: held me a moment in the clasp of her strong, young arms, and then, her high heels clicking on the tiles, ran into the house.
"More than enough," she called over her shoulder.
But when, charmingly hatted, dragging the point of a butterfly sunshade after her, she went down the path between Bill and Wright, there was no sign of her recent agitation on that smooth, creamy cheek.
Left alone, I sighed a little, and looked ahead. They had fallen in love so wholeheartedly, so gaily, those two. I pictured them, if all went well, going through life like the Princess and Prince in the fairy-tale, living "happily forever after." She could love, I knew, that feather-brained, big-hearted little friend of mine. She was young, too, younger than her years, an astonishing thing in Southern women. She would be easily assimilated, would adapt herself gracefully. And it was patent that she thought Wright head and shoulders above the average cut of men. She had told me so, without knowing it, over and over again. And Wright, diffident, sensitive Wright, under his absurdities and his worldly airs? He would cherish her, I knew, and be good to her all his life: invest her with a never-failing glamour, make her his model and his sovereign lady: write madrigals about her: worship at her tiny feet. It was a very pretty little Romance....