MATCHED PEARLS Read Online Free

glanced at her watch and shook her head.
    “I have an appointment at the country club at nine.”
    “Oh, not now,” he smiled. “I couldn’t go today at all. I thought perhaps tomorrow morning—early.
Could
you?”
    “It would certainly have to be early,” laughed Constance and wondered why she dallied with this handsome, ingenuous boy. She had lost all sense of his being presumptuous now.
    “I’m quite respectable, you know,” he said wistfully and flashed her a smile. “I could get Mr. Howarth to introduce us rightly. I’m with Howarth, Well and Company, you see—”
    Constance flashed him a smile herself now. The Howarths were all right people. He must be respectable, she felt sure. Yet he was unusual, different from her other men friends. She wondered why she was interested.
    “Could you go as early as half past five, or would six perhaps be better?” He fixed his brown eyes on her face now and gave her another of those radiant smiles, and suddenly she knew she was going to see those flowers tomorrow morning.
    “I’m not sure,” she said thoughtfully. “If you are going anyway and happen to be passing by here about that time I might come along. I can’t really promise. Something might make it impossible.”
    “Thank you,” he said with another of those grave smiles. “I’ll just be hoping. It’s very pleasant to have found a Christian friend right at the start in a strange place. I’m praising God for that. Now, I’ll bid you good morning. I must hurry to the office.”
    Constance stood with the bundle of flowers in her hands and watched him walk away in wonder. What a strange, unusual young man he was. She had never seen anyone like him before. Heavens! How very good-looking he was. It seemed too good to be true, such looks on a man!
    At the gate he turned and lifted his hat in a princely fashion. Constance stood still, smilingly nodded a friendly good-bye, and then wondered at herself.
    It was not until he was out of sight that she realized that she was still holding his snowy handkerchief in her hands with its mound of ferns and flowers. Then suddenly her cheeks grew hot. Why had she been so very friendly as to let him give her flowers and promise to take a walk with him tomorrow morning when she had resolved before he came in to put him in a stranger’s place? Well, there was one thing, she didn’t have to go and take that walk. She wouldn’t, of course. She had left herself a loophole. She had not
promised
.
    Then, with her cheeks still hot, she hurried into the house. She must get those flowers out of that handkerchief and the handkerchief out of sight before the family saw it.
    She tipped the flowers into a large plate and stuffed the handkerchief quickly into her sleeve out of sight just as her brother, Frank, amazingly appeared in the dining room door.
    “Who’s your comely giant, Connie?” he asked with a twinkle. “You certainly like ’em tall, don’t you?”
    Constance looked up with a smile that was meant to be natural, but her cheeks were still hot and needed no rouge, and she knew that the watchful eyes of her brother would not let that little item pass.
    “Oh, he’s just a man I met in church yesterday,” said Constance indifferently. “Fill that glass bowl with water for me, Frankie, that’s a dear.”
    “Hmmm!” murmured Frank wisely as he returned from the butler’s pantry with the big crystal fruit bowl filled with water. “You only met him yesterday, and yet he gets up at all hours to pick doodads out of the woods for you! You certainly fetch ’em quick, don’t you, Sister?”
    The color flew into Constance’s cheeks again to her great annoyance.
    “Oh, for sweet mercy’s sake, won’t you stop being ridiculous? He happened to be passing and I admired them. Of course he had to give them to me.”
    “Oh, was that the way it was?” mocked the imp of a brother. “I thought you were stooping down with your back to the street smelling daffodils when he