32
FLAMING
YOUTH
The glass door of the breakfast room gave her a view of the proceedings within. Sprawled upon the tiles five of the youthful local element were intent upon the dice which one of them had just rolled toward a central heap of silver and bills. “Seven! I lose again,” said the thrower cheerily. “Who'll stand for hiking the limit to a dollar?” Opposite Pat’s vantage point sprawled Selden Thorpe, son of the local rector. Pat knew they had not much means and, marking the pale, strained face of the boy, wished with misgivings that he wouldn’t. The misgivings vanished when she heard him say: “T’m an easy hundred ahead so I can’t kick. Let ’er go.”
She stepped back into the darkness to round the conservatory wing and brushed the mudguard of a lightless limousine. <A girl’s voice strained, tremulous, and laughing lent caution to her retreating steps; but she stopped within listening distance. “Don’t, Freddie! Till have to go in if you ? “Oh, come, Ada!
Be a sport.”
“Do behave yourself. Get me another drink.” “All right.” As the man stepped out, Pat shrank behind the car. She had recognized the girl’s voice as that of Ada Clare, who had the reputation of being an indiscriminate “necker.” Pat passed on. But that whisper from within the limousine, with its defensive, nervous,
eager, stimu-
lated effect, troubled the eavesdropper with strange, disturbing surmises. She wanted, yet feared to return and wait until Fred Browning, a man of thirty, well-liked in the neighbourhood, not the less perhaps because of his reputation as a “goer,” came back with the desired drink. What would be the next step in the unseen drama? A little stir of fear drove Pat onward. She stopped
