"Don't fret. Some of the mad will be taken out of me before I see Mr. Heath. The tide is running strong and it will be a pull to get the boat across to the mainland. Kiss me and wish me luck, Marcia. You do believe I will try to be wise, don't you?"
"That's right. You really can trust me, you know. I'm not so bad as I sound."
Tucking the check into the wee pocket of her sweater, Sylvia caught up her pert beret and perched it upon her curls.
"So long!" she called, looking back over her shoulder as she opened the door. "So long, Marcia! I'll be back as soon as ever I can."
The haste with which she disappeared, suddenly precipitated her into the arms of a young man who stood upon the steps preparing to knock.
"Hortie Fuller," cried Sylvia breathlessly. "Hortie! Where on earth did you come from?"
Her arms closed about his neck and he had kissed her twice before she swiftly withdrew, rearranging her curls and saying coldly:
"I cannot imagine what brought you here, Horatio."
"I can't imagine," repeated Sylvia, still very rosy and flustered, but with her most magnificent air, "what brought you to Wilton--I really cannot."
From his superior height of six-feet-two, he looked down at her meager five feet, amusement twinkling in his eyes.
Sylvia, however, was too intent on patting her curls into place to heed his glance.
"You wrote me to come, didn't you?" he presently inquired.
"Well, at least you led me to suppose you'd like it if I were here," persisted Horatio. "Toward the bottom of page two you said: 'I am positively homesick'; and in the middle of the back of page three you wrote: 'It seems years since I've seen you.'"
"What if I did?" answered the girl with a disdainful shrug.
Nevertheless the dimples showed in her cheeks.
"And that isn't all," Horatio went on. "At the end of page five you wrote: 'Would that you were here'!"
"That was only a figure of speech--what is called poetic license. Writers are always would-ing things: Would I were a bird; would I were a ring upon that hand; would I were--were--well, almost anything. But it doesn't mean at all that they would really like to be those things."
"Then you didn't mean it when you said you wished I was here."
"Why, of course I am pleased to see you, Hortie. It is very nice of you to come to the Cape to meet my aunt and--"