Blue eyes met blue eyes at that and flashed happy fire.  Lucky Ted!

“Oh, jolly!” exclaimed that delighted youth.  “Will you play basket-ball in the attic?”

“Of course I will.  Just the thing for a rainy day.”

“Bowls?”

“Yes, indeed.”

“Take a cross-country tramp?” His eyes were sparkling.

Roberta glanced out of the window.  The rain was dashing hard against the pane.  “If you won’t go through the West Wood marshes,” she stipulated.

“Sure I won’t.  They’d be pretty wet even for me on a day like this.  Is there anything you’d specially like to do yourself?” he bethought himself at this stage to inquire.

Roberta shrugged her shoulders.  “Of course it seems tame to propose settling down by the living-room fire and popping corn, after we get back and have got into our dry clothes,” said she, “but—­”

Ted grinned.  “That’s the stuff,” he acknowledged.  “I knew you’d think of the right thing to end up the lark with.”  He looked across at Richard with a proud and happy face.  “Didn’t I tell you she was a peach of a sister?” he challenged his guest.

Richard nodded.  “You certainly did,” he said.  “And I see no occasion to question the statement.”

His eyes met Roberta’s.  Never in his life had the thought of a cross-country walk in the rain so appealed to him.  At the moment he would have given his eagerly planned trip to the Far East for the chance to march by her side to-day, even though the course should lie through the marshes of West Wood, unquestionably the wettest place in the country on that particular wet afternoon.  But nobody would think of inviting him to go—­of course not.  And while Roberta and Ted were dashing along country lanes—­he could imagine how her cheeks would look, stung with rain, drops clinging to those bewildering lashes of hers—­he himself would be looking up references in dry and dusty State Supreme Court records, and making notes with a fountain pen—­a fountain pen—­symbol of the student.  What abominable luck!

Roberta was laughing as his eyes met hers.  The gay curve of her lips recalled to him one of the things Ted had said about her, concerning a certain boyish quality in her makeup, and he was strongly tempted to tell her of it.  But he resisted.

“I can see you two are great chums,” said he.  “I envy you both your afternoon, clear through to the corn-popping.”

“If you are still at work when we reach that stage we will—­send you in some of it,” she promised, and laughed again at the way his face fell.

“I thought perhaps you were going to invite me in to help pop,” he suggested boldly.

“I understand you are engaged in the serious labour of collecting material for a book on a most serious subject,” she replied.  “We shouldn’t dare to divert your mind; and besides I am told that Uncle Calvin intends to introduce you formally to the family by inviting you to dinner some evening next week.  Do you think you ought to steal in by coming to a corn-popping beforehand?  You see now I can quite truthfully say to Uncle Calvin that I don’t yet know you, but after I had popped corn with you—­”