“Not exactly,” admitted the boy with a returning grin.  “All right, Uncle Phil.  I’m game.  I’ll pay up.”

A moment later his uncle heard his whistle as he went down the driveway apparently as care free as if narrow escapes from death were nothing in his young life.  The doctor shook his head dubiously as he watched him from the window.  He would have felt more dubious still had he seen the boy board a Florence car a few minutes later on his way to keep a rendezvous with the girl about whom he had not wished to talk.

CHAPTER V

WHEN YOUTH MEETS YOUTH

Three quarters of an hour later Ted was seated on a log, near a small rustic bridge, beneath which flowed a limpid, gurgling stream.  On a log beside him sat a girl of perhaps eighteen years, exceedingly handsome with the flaming kind of beauty like a poppy’s, striking to the eye, shallow-petaled.  She was vividly effective against the background of deep green spruces and white birch in her bright pink dress and large drooping black hat.  Her coloring was brilliant, her lips full, scarlet, ripely sensuous.  Beneath her straight black brows her sparkling, black eyes gleamed with restless eagerness.  An ugly, jagged, still fresh wound showed beneath a carefully curled fringe of hair on her forehead.

“I don’t like meeting you this way,” Ted was saying.  “Are you sure your grandfather would have cut up rough if I had come to the house and called properly?”

“You betcher,” said his companion promptly.  “You don’t know grandpa.  He’s death on young men.  He won’t let one come within a mile of me if he can help it.  He’d throw a fit if he knew I was here with you now.  We should worry.  What he don’t know won’t hurt him,” she concluded with a toss of her head.  Then, as Ted looked dubious, she added, “You just leave grandpa to me.  If you had had your way you would have spilled the beans by telephoning me this morning at the wrong time.  See how much better I fixed it.  I told him a piece of wood flew up and hit me when I was chopping kindling before breakfast and that my head ached so I didn’t feel like going to church.  Then the minute he was out of the yard I ran to the ’phone and got you at the hotel.  It was perfectly simple that way—­slick as grease.  Easiest thing in the world to make a date.  We couldn’t have gotten away with it otherwise.”

Ted still looked dubious.  The phrase “gotten away with it” jarred.  At the moment he was not particularly proud of their mutual success in “getting away with it.”  The girl wasn’t his kind.  He realized that, now he saw her for the first time in daylight.

She had looked all right to him on the train night before last.  Indeed he had been distinctly fascinated by her flashing, gypsy beauty, ready laughter and quick, keen, half “fresh” repartee when he had started a casual conversation with her when they chanced to be seat mates from Holyoke on.