It was characteristic that, arrived at his destination, he straightway forgot the pleasures he was foregoing at Hal’s and plunged whole-heartedly into amusing himself to the utmost with Madeline Taylor. Carpe Diem was Ted Holiday’s motto.

Madeline had indeed proved unexpectedly pretty and attractive when she opened the door to him on Cousin Emma’s little box of a front porch, clad all in white and wearing no extraneous ornament of any sort, blushing delightfully and obviously more than glad of his coming.  He would not have been Ted Holiday if he hadn’t risen to the occasion.  The last girl in sight was usually the only girl for him so long as she was in sight and sufficiently jolly and good to look upon.

A little later Madeline donned a trim tailored black sailor hat and a pretty and becoming pale green sweater and the two went down the steps together, bound for an excursion to the park.  As they descended Ted’s hand slipped gallantly under the girl’s elbow and she leaned on it ever so little, reveling in the ceremony and prolonging it as much as possible.  Well she knew that Cousin Emma and the children were peering out from behind the curtains of the front bedroom upstairs, and that Mrs. Bascom and her stuck up daughter Lily had their faces glued to the pane next door.  They would all see that this was no ordinary beau, but a real swell like the magnificent young men in the movies.  Perhaps as she descended Cousin Emma’s steps and went down the path between the tiger lilies and peonies that flanked the graveled path with Ted Holiday beside her, Madeline Taylor had her one perfect moment.

Only the “ordinary” Fred, on hearing his wife’s voluble descriptions later of Madeline’s “grand” young man failed to be suitably impressed.  “Them swells don’t mean no girl no good no time,” he had summed up his views with sententious accumulation of negatives.

But little enough did either Ted or Madeline reck of Fred’s or any other opinion as they fared their blithe and care-free way that gala week.  The rest of the world was supremely unimportant as they went canoeing and motoring and trolley riding and mountain climbing and “movieing” together.  Madeline strove with all her might to dress and act and be as nearly like those other girls after whom she was modeling herself as possible, to do nothing, which could jar on Ted in any way or remind him that she was “different.”  In her happiness and sincere desire to please she succeeded remarkably well in making herself superficially at least very much like Ted’s own “kind of girl” and though with true masculine obtuseness he was entirely unaware of the conscious effort she was putting into the performance nevertheless he enjoyed the results in full and played up to her undeniable charms with his usual debonair and heedless grace and gallantry.