Just two, when she ought to have twenty!  When he would have liked to put all the Paris models in the store in a wagon and, himself driving, deliver them at her door!

“Having succumbed to temptation, I enjoy it out of sheer respect to the orange crop,” Mary said; “and yes, because I like beautiful gowns; wickedly, truly like them!  And I like the Avenue, just as I like the desert.”

And all that she liked he could give her!  And all that he could give she had stubbornly refused!

The liveliness of her expression, the many shades of meaning that she could set capering with a glance, were now as the personal reflection of the day and the scene.  Their gait was a sauntering one.  They went as far as the Park and started back, as if all the time of the desert were theirs.  They stopped to look into the windows of shops of every kind, from antiques to millinery.  When he saw a hat which he declared, after deliberate, critical appraisement, would surely become her, she asked boldly if it were better than the one she wore.

“I mean an extra hat; that one more hat would have the good fortune of becoming you!”

“Almost a real contribution to the literature of compliments!” she answered, unruffled.

He thought, too, that she ought to have a certain necklace in a jeweler’s window.

“To wear over my riding-habit or when I am digging in the flower beds?” she inquired.

When they passed a display of luxuries for masculine adornment, she found a further retort in suggesting that he ought to have a certain giddy fancy waistcoat.  He complimented her on her taste, bought the waistcoat and, going to the rear of the shop, returned wearing it with a momentarily appreciated show of jaunty swagger.

“Why be on the Avenue and not buy?” he queried, enthusing with a new idea.

Jim Galway should have a cowpuncher hat as a present.  The style of band was a subject of discussion calling on their discriminative views of Jim’s personal tastes.  This led to thoughts of others in Little Rivers who would appreciate gifts, and to the purchase of toys for the children, a positive revel.  When they were through it was well past noon and they were in the region of the restaurants.  The sun in majestic altitude swept the breadth of the Avenue.

“Shall we lunch—­yes, and in the Best Swell Place?” he asked, as if it were a matter-of-course part of the programme, while inwardly he was stirred with the fear of her refusal.  He felt that any minute she might leave him, with no alternative but another farewell.  She hesitated a moment seriously, then accepted blithely and naturally.

“Yes, the Best Swell Place—­let’s!  Who isn’t entitled to the Best Swell Place occasionally?”

After an argument in comparison of famous names, they were convinced that they had really chosen the Best Swell Place by the fact of a vacant table at a window looking out over a box hedge.  Jack told the waiter that the assemblage was not an autocracy, but a parliament which, with a full quorum present, would enjoy in discursive appreciation selections from the broad range of a bill of fare.