welcome on a grey day. Oh, he knew what to say—knew much better than Billie Sparks or even Horatio Fuller, the acknowledged beau of the town. In fact he made both[80] of them seem quite commonplace—even Hortie. Fancy it! [80] Probably that was because he had traveled. Apparently he had been almost everywhere—except to Alton City. Odd he should never have been there when he had visited just about every other corner, both of America and of Europe. Not that he had deliberately said so. He was far too modest for that. It was while trying to find out where his home was that she had stumbled upon the information. And come to think of it, she did not know now where he lived, she suddenly remembered. At the time she thought he had named the place; but she realized on reviewing the conversation that he had not. In fact, he had not told her much of anything about himself. It had all been about surfboating in the Pacific; skiing at Lake Placid and St. Moritz; climbing the Alps; motoring in Brittany. She actually did not know whether he had a father or a mother; a brother or a sister. At Alton City you would have found out all those things within the first ten minutes. Perhaps that was the reason he piqued her interest—because he was not like Alton City—not like it at all. Why, were Stanley Heath to stroll up Maple Ave[81]nue on a fine, sunny afternoon everybody—even the boys that loafed in front of Bailey's cigar store and the men who loitered on the post-office steps—would turn to look at him. [81] He would be so different from everybody else he would seem a being from another planet. It would be fun, she mused, to walk with him through this main street while those on both sides of it craned their necks and asked one another who he was. More fun yet to dash through its shaded arch of trees in a smart little car, talking and laughing with him all the way, and pretending to be unconscious of the staring spectators, although of course she would be seeing them all perfectly well out of the corner of her eye. She had done this sometimes with Hortie Fuller, simply because she knew every girl in
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