“So I should judge.  I didn’t think a mite of a fairy girl like you could be so cruel.  Some day I’ll exact full penance for all you’ve made me suffer but just now we’ll waive that and go over to the Plaza and have a high tea and talk.  But first I’m going to kiss you.  I don’t care if people are looking.  All Boston can look if it likes.  I’m going to do it.”

But it was only a scrub woman and not all Boston who witnessed that kiss, and she paid no attention to the performance.  Even had she seen it is hardly probable that she would have been vastly startled at the sight.  She was a very old woman and more than likely she had seen such sights before.  Perhaps she had even been kissed by a man herself, once upon a time.  We hope so.

The next day Larry and Ruth came home to the Hill, radiantly happy and full of their strange adventures.  Ruth was wearing an immensely becoming new dark blue velvet suit, squirrel furs and a new hat which to Margery’s shrewd feminine eyes betrayed a cost all out of proportion to its minuteness.  She was looking exquisitely lovely in her new finery.  Scant wonder Larry could not keep his eyes off of her.  Margery and Philip were something in the same state.

“On the strength of my being an heiress maybe Larry thought I might afford some new clothes,” Ruth confessed.  “Of course he paid for them—­temporarily,” she had added with a charming blush and a side long, deprecating glance at Doctor Holiday, senior.  She did not want him to disapprove of her for letting Larry buy her pretty clothes nor blame Larry for doing it.

But he only laughed and remarked that he would have gone shopping with her himself if he had any idea the results would be so satisfactory.

It was only when he was alone with Margery that he shook his head.

“Those crazy children behave as if everything were quite all right and as if they could run right out any minute and get married.  She doesn’t even wear her ring any more and they both appear to think the fact it presumably represents can be disposed of as summarily.”

“Let them alone,” advised his wife.  “They are all right.  It won’t do them a bit of harm to let themselves go a bit.  Larry does his worshiping with his eyes and maybe with his tongue when they are alone.  I don’t blame him.  She is a perfect darling.  And it is much better for him not to pretend he doesn’t care when we all know he does tremendously.  It was crushing it all back that made him so miserable and smash up as he wrote you.  I don’t believe he smashed very irretrievably anyway.  He is too much of a Holiday.”

The doctor smiled a little grimly.

“You honor us, my dear.  Even Holidays are men!”

“Thank heaven,” said Margery.

CHAPTER XXX

THE FIERY FURNACE