“Uneasy, nothing!  There’s not a thing in the world the matter with him; ribs are all in commission and his collar-bone hitched on again.  It’s just a case of moonie sulks with him.  He never was the real glad boy, but now he runs entirely to poetry and gloom.  He won’t go anywhere but over here to chew book-rags with the major or to read goo to Phoebe, which she passes on to you.  Wish I’d let him die in the swamps; chasing away to Panama for him was my mistake, I see.”  And David ruffled a young rose that drooped confidingly over toward him.

“Why did he ever go to Panama?  Why does he build bridges and things?  Other people like you and me can do that sort of thing; but he—­,” and Caroline Darrah raised her eyes full of naive questioning.

“Heavens, woman, poetry never in the world would grub-stake six feet of husky man!  But that’s just like you and Phoebe and all the other women.  You would like to feed me to the alligators, but the poet must sit in the shade and chew eggs and grape juice.  You trample on my feelings, child,” and David sighed plaintively.

Caroline eyed him a moment across the rose she held to her lips, then laughed delightedly.

“Indeed, indeed, I couldn’t stand losing you, David, nor could Phoebe.  Don’t imagine it!” And Caroline confessed her affection for him with the naïveté with which a child offers a flower.

The absolute entente cordiale which had existed between her and Phoebe from the moment Mrs. Buchanan had presented them to each other in the dusk-shadowed library, had been extended to include David Kildare.  He was duly appreciative of her almost appealing friendship, chaffed her about the three governors, depended upon her to further his tumultuous suit, admired her beauty, insisted upon it in season and out, and initiated her into the social intricacies of his gay set with the greatest glee.

“I don’t trust you one little bit, Caroline Darrah Brown,” David broke in on her moment’s silent appreciation of him and his friendliness.  “You look at him kinder partial-like, too.”

“Oh, one must admire him, his poems are so lovely!  I have watched for them from the first one years ago.  Do you remember the one where he—­”

“Don’t remember a single line of a single one, and don’t want to!  Phoebe’s always quoting them at me.  She’s got a book of ’em.  See if I don’t smash him up some day if I have to listen to much more of it.”  David’s face was a study in the contradictions of a tormented grin.

Caroline eyed him again for a moment across the rose and then they both laughed delightedly.  But David was for the pressing of his point just the same.

“Dear Daughter of the Three,” he pleaded, “can’t you help me out?  Mollycoddle him a bit.  Do, now, that’s a good child!  Keep him ‘interested’, as she calls it!  You are quite as good to look at as Phoebe and are enough more—­more,”—­and David paused for a word that would compare Caroline’s appeal and Phoebe’s brisk challenge.