“The kind that doesn’t express anything—­except having had a good time every minute of one’s life.”

“Why, Rob, what’s the matter with you?  Anybody would think you had something against poor Mr. Kendrick.”

“If he were ‘poor Mr. Kendrick’ there might be a chance of liking him, for he would have had to do something.”

Roberta was pulling out hairpins with energy, and now let the whole dark mass tumble about her shoulders.  The half-curling locks were very thick and soft, and as she shook them away from her face she reminded Ruth of a certain wild little Arabian pony of her own.

“You throw back your head just like Sheik when he’s going to bolt,” Ruth cried, laughing.  “I wish my hair were like that.  It looks perfectly dear whatever you do with it, and mine’s only pretty when it’s been put just right.”

“It certainly was put just right to-night then,” said a third voice, and Rosamond, Stephen’s wife, appeared in Roberta’s half-open door.  “May I come in?  Steve hasn’t come up yet, and I’m so comfortable in this loose thing I want to sit up a while and enjoy it.”

Rosamond looked hardly older than Roberta; there were times when she looked younger, being small and fair.  Ruth considered her quite as much of a girl as either herself or Roberta, and welcomed her eagerly to the discussion in which she herself was so much interested.

“Rosy,” was her first question, “did you think our guest was bored to-night?”

“Bored?” exclaimed Mrs. Stephen in surprise.  “Why should he be?  He didn’t look it whenever I observed him.  And if you had seen him when the trio was playing you wouldn’t have thought so.  By the way, he has an eye for colour.  He noticed how your frock and Rob’s went together in the candle-light, with the harp to give a touch of gold.”

“Did he say so?” cried Ruth in delight.

“He asked if the colour scheme was intentional.  I said I thought it probably was—­on your part.  Rob never thinks of colour schemes.”

“Neither does any man,” murmured Roberta from the depths of the hair she was brushing with an energetic arm.  “Unless it happens to be his business,” she amended.

“Rob doesn’t like him,” declared Ruth, “just because he has money and good looks and doesn’t work for his living, and likes pretty colour schemes.  He probably gets that from having seen so much wonderful art in his travels.  Aren’t painters just as good as bridge-builders?  Rob doesn’t think so.  She wants every man to get his hands grubby.”

Roberta turned about, laughing.  “This one isn’t even a painter.  Go to bed, you foolish, analytical child.  And don’t dream of the beautiful guest who admired your corn-coloured frock.”

“He only liked it because it set off your blue one,” Ruth shot back.

“He said nothing whatever about my lovely new white gown,” Rosamond called after her.