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Read Ebook: Flaming Youth by Adams Samuel Hopkins
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Ebook has 2924 lines and 72944 words, and 59 pages
Pat reflected before answering. "Don't all girls have 'em?"
"If they do, they don't talk about them."
"Oh, that's all bunk," declared the cheerful Pat. "If you've got the idea inside you, you might as well spit it out.... I'll bet men tell."
The bride looked at the clever, eager, childish face with sudden panic. "If I thought they did," she began, but immediately broke off, taking a plaintive, invalidish tone. "Do go away, Scrubs! You're making my head ache. And for heaven's sake, don't stare at me to-morrow like you have to-day. It gives me the creeps."
"It gives me the thrills," returned the alarmingly outspoken ing?nue, as she danced out.
Others came for dances, however; Selden Thorpe, the rector's son, the most often. Him she deemed "interesting looking," with his pale face, bristly hair, and hard, grey eyes, typical of the unconscious egotist. Though he danced well, here Pat could overmatch him, for she had the passion of rhythmic movement in her blood.
"You've got the fairy foot all right, little one," said he, investing the epithet with his conscious sophomoric superiority.
Pat felt offended. She wanted so much to be grown-up that evening. But she feared to alienate her escort's budding interest if she showed any resentment.
"Anyone can dance with as good a dancer as you are," she replied sweetly.
He gave her an appreciative glance. "Can they? I guess we could enter for a prize all right."
"We could make some of 'em hustle to beat us," she declared gaily.
"Could you make a getaway some evening, and we'd slip over and try it out at one of the big places?"
"Would you take me?" she cried, delighted. But her face fell. "There won't be time. I'm going back to school."
The talk languished after this disappointment. The number was over and they were seated in a remote corner of the little conservatory. Thorpe wondered what he could find to talk to this kid about.
"Engine completely stalled," he thought ruefully.
On her part, Patricia experienced a sense of dismal vacancy. What was there in her mental repertoire to interest this worldly collegian? The memory of the party at which she had seen him gambling came to mind as a hopeful bridge over the widening conversational chasm.
"Been winning much lately?" she asked brightly.
"Winning?" He looked puzzled. "At what?"
"Craps. I heard you stung the crowd for a hundred dollars at our party."
He was flattered and lofty. "Oh, I did pretty well. Where'd you hear about it? You weren't at the party."
"Not for long," confessed Pat. "But I was among those present for a little while."
"Ouch!" said Pat, and licked the wounded knuckle with a sharp, pink tongue like a young animal's.
"Let's see," said the youth.
He took her hand, glanced at it, and set his lips to the reddened skin cavalierly enough. "That better?" he asked.
Pat nodded. She stared intently at the solaced spot wondering what the progress of the game would be. In Thorpe's inured mind there was no room for surmise. To him this was all formula, the parliamentary procedure of casual love-making. He drew the yielding fingers into his left hand and slipped his right arm across the slim, girlish shoulders. She leaned back a little from his embrace.
"Well?" he questioned, an easy laugh on his lips.
"Well, what?" she whispered.
He bent and kissed her. It was a quick kiss, adventurous and playful. Not so had Warren Graves's eager and searching lips closed down upon hers. Pat was both disappointed of her expected thrill, and unaccountably relieved and reassured. A queer, inward fluttering which had unbalanced her thoughts for the moment when the appropriative arm encircled her, was stilled. Suddenly she felt quite mistress of herself and the situation. She proceeded now according to a formula which she was improvising, and which millions of girls had improvised before her.
"What did you do that for?" she murmured.
"Didn't you want me to?"
Pat abandoned her formula before it was fairly under way. "I suppose I did," she admitted.
Expectant of the usual "No," he was startled, amused, and a little roused. "Did you?" he said.
He drew her closer, bent his mouth to hers again, felt a swift stir at the sweet, soft pressure, followed by a sensible chilling as she turned away to say thoughtfully:
"I wonder why I did."
"You're a queer kid," he observed genuinely. "But there's something mighty sweet about you."
"Is there?" she cried, charmed with the direct flattery.
"I suppose you wanted me to because you like me," he pursued. "Wasn't that it?"
"I don't know. I like being petted."
"I don't know," she repeated. "I've never been but once before."
"Did you like that better than this?"
"It was different."
"Different?" His interest and curiosity were piqued; his vanity, too. "Well, I can make it different, too."
"No," choked Pat in sudden panic as she felt his lean, sinewy arms encircle her crushingly. "Don't, Sel!"
She twitched her face away from his. Immediately her alarm gave place to a stimulus of sheer delight. She had distinctly felt him tremble. An epochal discovery! For she was, herself, quite cool. She possessed then the mysterious power to arouse men out of themselves, while remaining self-possessed, to affect them in this strange manner more than she herself was moved.
"Pat, dear!" whispered the youth, avid and insistent.
He had ceased to seem formidably old to her now; she was his superior. She kissed him again, but lightly and pushed him back.
"Bad bunny!" she mocked. "We ought not to, Sel."
"Oh, what's the harm?"
"Someone might come in."
"Come outside, then."
"Oh, let's go back and dance. I'm afraid of you." She gave him a sidelong glance with this gratuitous lie. "Come, I love this trot."
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