"And, Garry, so is Virginia Suydam." "Really," he said, suddenly subdued as his aunt who was forty and looked twenty-five came forward in her pretty chamber-gown, and placed two firm white arms around him and kissed him squarely and with vigour.
"You dear!" she said; "you certainly are the best-looking boy in all Florida.

When did you come?
Is Jim Wayward's yacht here still?
And why didn't he come to see me ?" "The _Ariani_ sailed for Miami last night after I landed.

I left my card, but the office people rang and rang and could get no answer--" "I was in bed! How stupid of me! I retired early because Virginia and I had been dissipating shamefully all the week and my aged bones required a rest....

And now tell me all about this new commission of yours.

I have met the Cardross family; everybody at Palm Beach is talking about the magnificent park Mr.Cardross is planning; and your picture has appeared in the local paper, and I've told everybody you're quite wonderful, and everybody now is informing everybody else that you're quite wonderful!" His very gay aunt lay back in her great soft chair, pushing with both fair hands the masses of chestnut hair from her forehead, and smiling at him out of her golden brown eyes--the jolliest, frankest of eyes--the sort even women trust instinctively at first glimpse.
So he sat there and told her all about his commission and how this man, Neville Cardross, whom he had never even seen, had written to him and asked him to make the most splendid park in America around the Cardross villa, and had invited him to be his guest during his stay in Florida.
"They evidently are nice people from the way Mr.Cardross writes," he said.