“Drop it,” he said, with another twist, and the fan fell.

But Randy was not satisfied.  “Do you think,” he said, “that I am through with you?  What you need is tar and feathers, but failing that——­” he did not finish his sentence.  He caught George around the body and began to push him back towards the fountain.

George fought doggedly—­but Randy was strong with the muscular strength of youth and months of military training.

“I’ll kill you for this,” George kept saying.

“No,” said Randy, conserving his breath, “they don’t—­do it—­in—­these—­days——­”

He had Dalton now at the rim and with a final effort of strength he lifted him—­there was a splash, and into the deeps of the great basin went George, while the bronze Neptune, and the bronze dolphins, and the nymphs with flowing hair, splashed and spouted a welcoming chorus that drowned his cry!

Randy, head up, eyes shining, marched into the house and had a servant brush him off and powder a scratch on his chin; then he went down-stairs to the Hunt Room and strode across the room until he came to where Becky sat in her corner.

“I found your fan,” he told her, and laid it, a blaze of lovely color, on the table in front of her.

CHAPTER XIII

THE WHISTLING SALLY

I

Becky, as she journeyed towards the north, had carried with her a vision of a new and rather disturbing Randy—­a Randy who, striding across the Hunt Room with high-held head, had delivered her fan, and had, later, asked for an explanation.

“How did he get it, Becky?”

She had told him.

“Why didn’t you tell me when I came back and said I would go for it?”

“I was afraid he might still be there.”

“Well?”

“And that something might happen.”

Something had happened later by the fountain.  But Randy did not speak of it.  “I saw the fan in his hand and asked for it,” grimly, “and he gave it to me——­”

On the night before she went away, Randy had said, “I can’t tell you all that you mean to me, Becky, and I am not going to try.  But I am yours always—­remember that——­” He had kissed her hand and held it for a moment against his heart.  Then he had left her, and Becky had wanted to call him back and say something that she felt had been left unsaid, but had found that she could not.

Admiral Meredith met his granddaughter in New York, and the rest of the trip was made with him.

Admiral Meredith was as different from Judge Bannister in his mental equipment as he was in physical appearance.  He was a short little man, who walked with a sailor’s swing, and who laughed like a fog-horn.  He had ruddy cheeks, and the manners of a Chesterfield.  If he lacked the air of aristocratic calm which gave distinction to Judge Bannister, he supplied in its place a sophistication due to his contact with a world which moved faster than the Judge’s world in Virginia.