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“Then that proves it,” she replied. “And now I’m going back to the office.”
He rose at once to go with her.
“Please to sit right where you are for five minutes,” she begged.
He sat down again and watched her as she hurried out the door. The moment she disappeared the place seemed curiously empty––curiously empty and inane. He stared at the white-tiled walls, at the heaps of pastry upon the marble counter, prepared as for wholesale. Yet, as long as she sat here with him, he had noticed none of those details. For all he was conscious of his surroundings, they might have been lunching together in that subdued, pink-tinted room where he so often took Frances.
He started as he thought of her. Then he smiled contentedly. He must have Frances to lunch with him in the pink-tinted dining-room next Saturday.
64CHAPTER VITWO GIRLS
That night, when Miss Winthrop took her place in the Elevated on her way to the uptown room that made her home, she dropped her evening paper in her lap, and, chin in hand, stared out of the window. That was decidedly unusual. It was so unusual that a young man who had taken this same train with her month after month, and who had rather a keen eye for such things, noticed for the first time that she had in profile rather an attractive face. She was wondering just how different this Pendleton was from the other men she met. Putting aside for a moment all generalizations affecting the sex as a whole, he was not like any of them. For the first time in a long while she found herself inclined to accept a man for just what he appeared to be. It was difficult not to believe in Pendleton’s eyes, and still more difficult not to believe in his smile, which made her smile back. And yet, if she had learned anything, those were65the very things in a man she had learned to question.
Not that she was naturally cynical, but her downtown experience had left her very skeptical about her ability to judge men from such details. Blake, for instance, could smile as innocently as a child and meet any woman’s eyes without flinching. But there was this difference between Blake and Pendleton: the latter was new to New York. He was fresh to the city, as four years ago she had been. In those days she had dreamed of such a man as Pendleton––a dream that she was sure she had long since forgotten. Four years was a long while. It gave her rather a motherly feeling as she thought of Pendleton from that distance. And she rather enjoyed that. It left her freer to continue thinking of him. This she did until she was almost carried beyond her street.
After that she almost forgot to stop at the delicatessen store for her rolls and butter and cold meat. She hurried with them to her room––hurried because she was anxious to reach the place where she was more at liberty than anywhere else on earth. She tossed aside66her hat and coat and sat by the radiator to warm her hands.
She wondered if Pendleton would go the same way Blake had gone. It was so very easy to go the one way or the other. Farnsworth himself never helped. His theory was to allow new men to work out their own salvation, and to fire them if they did not. He had done that with young Brown, who came in last year; and it had seemed to her then a pity––though she had never liked Brown. This was undoubtedly what he would do with Pendleton.
But supposing––well, why shouldn’t she take an interest in Pendleton to the extent of preventing such a finish if she could? There need be nothing personal in such an interest; she could work it out as an experiment.
Miss Winthrop, now thoroughly warm, began to prepare her supper. She spread a white cloth upon her table, which was just large enough to seat one. She placed upon this one plate, one cup and saucer, one knife and fork and spoon. It was a very simple matter to prepare supper for one. She sliced her small portion of cold meat and placed this on the table. She removed67her rolls from a paper bag and placed them beside the cold meat. By this time the hot water was ready, and she took a pinch of tea, put it in her tea-ball, and poured hot water over it in her cup. Then she took her place in the one chair.
But, oddly enough, although there was no place for him, another seemed to be with her in the room.
“Let me have your engagement-book a moment,” Frances requested.
Don complied. He had taken his dinner that night at the dairy lunch, and after returning to the house to dress had walked to his fiancée’s.
Frances puckered her brows.
“You are to have a very busy time these next few weeks,” she informed him. “Let me see––to-day is Wednesday. On Friday we are to go to the Moores’. Evelyn’s débutante dance, you know.”
She wrote it in his book.
“On Saturday we go to the opera. The Warringtons have asked us to a box party.”
She wrote that.
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“Next Wednesday comes the Stanley cotillion. Have you received your invitation?”
“Haven’t seen it,” he answered.
“The Stanleys are always unpardonably late, but I helped Elise make out her list. On the following Friday we dine at the Westons’.”
She wrote that.
“On the following Saturday I’m to give a box party at the opera––the Moores and Warringtons.”
She added that, and looked over the list.
“And I suppose, after going to this trouble, I’ll have to remind you all over again on the day of each event.”
“Oh, I don’t know; but––” He hesitated.
“Well?” she demanded.
“Seems to me we are getting pretty gay, aren’t we?”
“Don’t talk like an old man!” she scolded. “So far, this has been a very stupid season.”
“But––”
“Well?”
“You know, now I’m in business––”
“Please don’t remind me of that any more than is necessary,” she interrupted.
69
“Oh, all right; only, I do have to get up in the morning.”
“Why remind me of that? It’s disagreeable enough having to think of it even occasionally.”
“But I do, you know.”
“I know it, Don. Honestly I do.”
She seated herself on the arm of his chair, with an arm about his neck and her cheek against his hair.
“And I think it quite too bad,” she assured him––“which is why I don’t like to talk about it.”
She sprang to her feet again.
“Now, Don, you must practice with me some of the new steps. You’ll get very rusty if you don’t.”
“I’d rather hear you sing,” he ventured.
“This is much more important,” she replied.
She placed a Maxixe record on the Victrola that stood by the piano; then she held out her arms to him.
“Poor old hard-working Don!” she laughed as he rose.
It was true that it was as poor old hard-working70Don he moved toward her. But there was magic in her lithe young body; there was magic in her warm hand; there was magic in her swimming eyes. As he fell into the rhythm of the music and breathed the incense of her hair, he was whirled into another world––a world of laughter and melody and care-free fairies. But the two most beautiful fairies of all were her two beautiful eyes, which urged him to dance faster and faster, and which left him in the end stooping, with short breaths, above her upturned lips.
71CHAPTER VIIROSES
When Miss Winthrop changed her mind and consented not to seek a new luncheon place, she was taking a chance, and she knew it. If ever Blake heard of the new arrangement,––and he was sure to hear of it if any one ever saw her there with Don,––she was fully aware how he would interpret it to the whole office.
She was taking a chance, and she knew it––knew it with a curious sense of elation. She was taking a chance for him. This hour at noon was the only opportunity she had of talking to Don. If she let that pass, then she could do nothing more for him. She must stand back and watch him go his own way, as others had gone their way.
For one thing was certain: she could allow no further conversations in the office. She had been forced to stop those, and had warned him that he must not speak to her again there except on business, and that he must not sit at72Powers’s desk and watch her at work. When he had challenged her for a reason, she had blushed; then she had replied simply:––
“It isn’t business.”
So, when on Saturday morning Don came in heavy-eyed for lack of sleep after the Moore dance, she merely looked up and nodded and went on with her work. But she studied him a dozen times when he did not know she was studying him, and frowned every time he suppressed, with difficulty, a yawn. He appeared tired––dead tired.
For the first time in months she found herself looking forward to the noon hour. She glanced at her watch at eleven-thirty, at eleven-forty-five, and again at five minutes before twelve.
To-day she reserved a seat for him in the little lunch-room. But at fifteen minutes past twelve, when Don usually strode in the door, he had not come. At twenty minutes past he had not come. If he did not come in another five minutes she resolved to make no further effort to keep his place––either to-day or at any future time. At first she was irritated; then she was worried. It was possible he was73lunching with Blake. If he began that––well, she would be freed of all further responsibility, for one thing. But at this point Don entered. He made no apologies for having kept her waiting, but deposited in the empty chair, as he went off for his sandwich and coffee, a long, narrow box done up in white paper. She gave him time to eat a portion of his lunch before she asked:––
“Out late again last night?”
“Went to a dance,” he nodded.
She was relieved to hear that. It was a better excuse than some, but still it was not a justifiable excuse for a man who needed all his energies.
“You didn’t get enough sleep, then.”
“I should say not,” Don admitted cheerfully. “In bed at four and up at seven.”
“You look it.”
“And I feel it.”
“You can’t keep that up long.”
“Sunday’s coming, and I’m going to sleep all day,” he declared.
“But what’s the use of getting into that condition?” she inquired.
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He thought a moment.
“Well, I don’t suppose a man can cut off everything just because he’s in business.”
“That’s part of the business––at the beginning,” she returned.
“To work all the time?”
“To work all the time,” she nodded. “I wish I had your chance.”
“My chance to work?” he laughed.
“Your chance to get ahead,” she answered. “It’s all so easy––for a man!”
“Easy?”
“You don’t have to do anything but keep straight and keep at work. You ought to have taken those circulars home with you last night and learned them by heart.”
“I’ve read ’em. But, hang it all, they don’t mean anything.”
“Then find out what they mean. Keep at it until you do find out. The firm isn’t going to pay you for what youdon’tknow.”
“But last night––well, a man has to get around a little bit.”
“Around where?” she questioned him.
“Among his friends. Doesn’t he?”
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She hesitated.
“It seems to me you’ll have to choose between dances and business.”
“Eh?”
She nodded.
“Between dances and business. I tell you, this next six months is going to count a lot on how you make good with Farnsworth.”
“Well, he isn’t the only one,” he said.
“He’s the only one in this office––I know what I’m talking about.”
“But outside the office––”
She put down her fork.
“I don’t know why I’m mixing up in your business,” she declared earnestly. “Except that I’ve been here three years now, and have seen men come and go. Every time they’ve gone it has been clear as daylight why they went. Farnsworth is square. He hasn’t much heart in him, but he’s square. And he has eyes in the back of his head.”
She raised her own eyes and looked swiftly about the room as if she half-expected to discover him here.
“What’s the matter?” he inquired.
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She did not answer his question, but as she ran on again she lowered her voice:––
“You’ve been in his office to-day?”
“He gave me some more circulars,” Don admitted.
“Then you’d better believe he knew you didn’t get to bed last night until 4 a.m. And you’d better believe he has tucked that away in his mind somewhere.”
Don appeared worried.
“He didn’t say anything.”
“No, he didn’t say anything. He doesn’t say anything until he has a whole collection of those little things. Even then he doesn’t say much; but what he does say––counts.”
“You don’t think he’s getting ready to fire me?” he asked anxiously.
“He’s always getting ready,” she answered. “He’s always getting ready to fire or advance you. That’s the point,” she went on more earnestly. “What I don’t understand is why the men who come in here aren’t getting ready too. I don’t see why they don’t play the game. I might stay with the firm twenty years and I’d still be pounding a typewriter. But you––”
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She raised her eyes to his. She saw that Don’s had grown less dull, and her own warmed with this initial success.
“You used to play football, didn’t you?” she asked.
“A little.”
“Then you ought to know something about doing things hard; and you ought to know something about keeping in training.”
“But look here, it seems to me you take this mighty seriously.”
“Farnsworth does,” she corrected. “That’s why he’s getting ten thousand a year.”
The figures recalled a vivid episode.
“Ten thousand a year,” he repeated after her. “Is that what he draws?”
“That’s what they say. Anyway, he’s worth it.”
“And you think I––I might make a job like that?”
“I’ll bet I’d try for it if I were in your boots,” she answered earnestly.
“I’ll bet you’d land it if you were in my boots.” He raised his coffee-cup. “Here’s to the ten thousand a year,” he drank.
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Miss Winthrop rose. She had talked more than she intended, and was somewhat irritated at herself. If, for a second, she thought she had accomplished something, she did not think so now, as he too rose and smiled at her. He handed her the pasteboard box.
“Your two dollars is in there,” he explained.
She looked perplexed.
“Shall I wait five minutes?”
“Yes,” she answered, as he thrust the box into her hands.
That box worried her all the afternoon. Not having a chance to open it, she hid it beneath her desk, where it distracted her thoughts until evening. Of course she could not open it on the Elevated, so it lay in her lap, still further to distract her thoughts on the way home. It seemed certain that a two-dollar bill could not occupy all that space.
She did not wait even to remove her hat before opening it in her room. She found a little envelope containing her two-dollar bill nestling in five dollars’ worth of roses.
It was about as foolish a thing as she had ever known a man to do.
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She placed the flowers on the table when she had her supper. All night long they filled the room with their fragrance.
80CHAPTER VIIIA MAN OF AFFAIRS
When, with some eighteen dollars in his pocket, Don on Sunday ordered Nora to prepare for him on that day and during the following week a breakfast of toast, eggs, and coffee, he felt very much a man of affairs. He was paying for his own sustenance, and with the first money he had ever earned. He drew from his pocket a ten-dollar bill, a five-dollar bill, a two-dollar bill, and some loose change.
“Pick out what you need,” he ordered, as he held the money toward her.
“I don’t know how much it will be, sir. I’ll ask the cook, sir.”
“Very well; ask the cook. About dinners––I think I’d better wait until I see how I’m coming out. Dinners don’t matter so much, any way, because they come after I’m through work.”
Don ate his breakfast in the dining-room before the open fire, as his father used to do.81In smoking-jacket and slippered feet, he enjoyed this as a rare luxury––even this matter of breakfasting at home, which until now had been merely a negative detail of routine.
When he had finished he drew his chair closer to the flames and lighted a cigarette. He had been cutting down on cigarettes. He had always bought them by the hundred; he was now buying them by the box. Until this week he never realized that they represented money. He was paying now twenty-five cents for a box of ten; and twenty-five cents, as he had learned in the restaurant in the alley, was a sum of money with tremendous possibilities. It would buy, for one thing, five egg sandwiches; and five egg sandwiches would keep a man from being uncomfortably hungry a good many hours.
Thus a quarter, from being merely an odd piece of loose change, took on a vital, tangible character of its own. Translated into smokes, it gave a smoke a new value. He had started in to make a box of cigarettes last a day; but he was now resolved to make them last two days. This allowed him one after each meal and two in the evening.
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If at first he had considered this a hardship, he was beginning to appreciate the fact that it had its compensating advantages. This morning, for instance, he felt that he had never tasted such good tobacco in his life. Like his breakfast, it was a pleasure to be prolonged––to give his thought to. He smoked slowly and carefully and keenly. With his head against the back of his chair, he watched the white cloudlets curl upward after he had inhaled their fragrance. This was no dull habit indulged in automatically.
In this moment of indulgence his thoughts turned to Miss Winthrop. It was nearing twelve, and perhaps this had something to do with it. He was going to miss that luncheon hour. He had come to look forward to it as quite the most interesting event of the day. From his comfortable position before the fire, he wondered why.
It was impossible to say she had any definite physical attractions, although her eyes were not bad. They piqued a man’s curiosity, those eyes. One remembered them. That was true also of her mouth. Don had no very definite notion of83its exact shape, but he remembered how it surprised one by changing from the tenderness of a young girl’s mouth to the firmness of a man’s a dozen times in the course of a few minutes’ conversation.
It was quarter-past twelve. If he had known her telephone number he would have called her up now, just to say “Hello.” He would be taking a chance, however; for, as likely as not, she would inquire what he was doing, and would, he felt sure, scold him for having so late a breakfast.
Odd, that a woman should be so energetic! He had always thought of them as quite the opposite. Leisureliness was a prerogative of the sex. He had always understood that it was a woman’s right to pamper herself.
Undoubtedly she would object to his sitting on here before the open fire. Farnsworth would not waste a morning like this––he seemed to hear her telling him so. If he wanted that ten thousand a year, he ought to be working on those circulars. A man was not paid for what he didn’t know. Here, with nothing else to do, was a good time to get after them. Well, he had gone so far as to bring them home with him.
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He rose reluctantly, went upstairs to his room, and brought them down. He began on the electric company which was offering gold bonds at a price to net four and a half per cent. Then Nora came in to call him to the telephone.
“Who is it, Nora?”
“Miss Stuyvesant, sir.”
“Oh, yes.”
He hurried to the telephone.
“Good-morning, Frances.”
“Dad and Mother have gone to church and it’s very stupid here,” she complained. “Can’t you come over?”
He hesitated the fraction of a second.
“Oh, of course,––if you don’t want to,––” she began quickly.
“It isn’t that, Frances. Of course I want to come; only, there were some papers I brought home from the office––”
“Well?”
“I can go over them some other time. I’ll be right up.”
A discovery that encouraged Don the following85week was that by some unconscious power of absorption he grew sufficiently familiar with the financial jargon of the office to feel that it really was within the possibilities that some day he might understand it fully. He found several opportunities to talk with Powers, and the latter, after recovering from his surprise at the primitive nature of some of Don’s questions about notes and bonds, went to some trouble to answer them. Not only that, but he mentioned certain books that might supply fuller and more fundamental information.
“I know these sound like fool questions,” Don apologized, “but I’ve never been down in this end of the town much.”
“That’s all right,” replied Powers. “Come to me any time you’re stuck.”
After Powers went out, Don sat down and tried to recall some of the things he had been told. He remembered some of them and some of them he didn’t. But that day at lunch Miss Winthrop handed him a stenographic report of the entire conversation. Don looked over it in amazement. It was in the form of question and answer.
86
Mr. Pendleton:Say, old man, what is a gold bond, anyway?
Mr. Powers:I beg your pardon?
And so on down to Don’s final apology.
Mr. Pendleton:I know these sound like fool questions––
Mr. Powers:That’s all right––
“Read it over in your spare time,” advised Miss Winthrop; “then you won’t ask him the same questions twice.”
“But how in thunder did you get this?” he inquired.
“I wasn’t busy just then, and took it down. I knew you’d forget half he told you.”
“It was mighty good of you,” he answered. “But I wish you had left out my talk. Now that I see it in type, it sounds even more foolish than I thought it was.”
“I’ve seen a lot of things that didn’t turn out well in type,” she nodded. “But you needn’t read that part of it. What Powers said was worth while. He knows what he’s talking about, and that’s why he’s the best bond salesman in the house.”
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“What sort of a salary doeshedraw?”
“I don’t know,” she answered. “And if I were you I’d forget the salary end of my job for a while.”
“It’s a mighty important end,” he declared.
“I don’t see it,” she returned frankly. “I suppose you’re starting on twenty-five?”
“That’s all,” he admitted.
“It’s all you’re worth. Any one to support besides yourself?”
“No.”
“Then what you worrying about?”
“But, good Heavens, a man can’t live on that––any length of time.”
“Can’t? I know men who support a wife and children on less.”
“Eh?”
“And do it decently,” she nodded. “I live on half of that myself.”
“You?”
“Of course. Did you think I drew a salary like Farnsworth?”
She laughed at his open astonishment. It appeared genuine.
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“You live on half of twenty-five dollars a week?” he repeated.
She did not care to pursue the subject. It was a bit too personal.
“So do hundreds of thousands of others,” she informed him. “On that and less than that. Now, you put that paper away in your pocket, and don’t ask Powers another question until you know it by heart. Then get after him again. When you run across something you don’t know, why don’t you write it down?”
He took out his engagement-book on the spot and made an entry.
“I’ve written down that you say it’s possible to live on twenty-five dollars a week,” he informed her, as he replaced the book in his pocket.
“Don’t be silly,” she warned. “You’d better write down something about not worrying about your salary at all.”
“I’ll do that,” he returned.
He took out his engagement-book again and scribbled a line.
“Miss Winthrop says not to worry about my salary.”
“CAN’T? I KNOW MEN WHO SUPPORT A WIFE AND CHILDREN ON LESS”
“CAN’T? I KNOW MEN WHO SUPPORT A WIFE AND CHILDREN ON LESS”
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“I didn’t say it,” she protested.
“Them’s your very words.”
“I mean––” she grew really confused. “I mean––you needn’t put it down that I said it. You ought to say it to yourself.”
He shook his head. “That’s too deep for me.”
“Then let’s drop the subject,” she answered curtly. “Only don’t get the idea that it’s I who am worrying about your salary, one way or the other.”
“No need of getting peeved about it,” he suggested.
“Not in the slightest,” she agreed.
But she did not wait for her éclair, and went back to the office in anything but a good humor.
On the whole, Miss Winthrop was rather disappointed in him as a result of this last interview––the more so because he had begun the day so well. Her hopes had risen high at the way he approached Powers, and at the seriousness with which he had listened to what Powers had to say. He had acted like a man eager to learn. Then he had spoiled it all by placing undue emphasis on the salary end.
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This new development in Pendleton came as a surprise. It did not seem consistent with his nature as she read it in his eyes. It was not in character. It left her doubting her judgment about him along other lines. She did not object to his ambition. That was essential. He ought to work for Farnsworth’s position––but for the position, not the salary. The position stood for power based upon ability. That was the sort of success she would be keen about if she were a man.
Curious, too, that Mr. Pendleton should be so keen about money in this one direction. She had thought his tendency all the other way, and had made a mental note that sometime she must drive home to him a few facts about having a decent respect for money. A man who would return the loan of a two-dollar bill in five dollars’ worth of roses was not the sort of man one expected to have a vaulting ambition for thousands for their own sake. One thing was sure––he was not the type of man who ought to occupy so much of her attention on a busy afternoon.
At a few minutes before five, just as Miss91Winthrop was jabbing the last pin into her hat, a messenger boy hurried into the office with a parcel bearing a noticeable resemblance to a one-pound candy box. He inquired of Eddie for Miss Winthrop, and Eddie, with considerable ceremony, escorted the boy to the desk of that astonished young woman.
“Sign here,” the boy ordered.
Miss Winthrop gave a swift glance around the office. Mr. Pendleton was at work at Powers’s desk and didn’t even look up. It was a remarkable exhibition of concentration on his part. Blake, however, swung around in his chair and raised his brows.
Miss Winthrop seized the pencil and wrote her name, dotting the “i” and crossing the “t” with vicious jabs. Then she picked up the box and hurried toward the door.
“From a devoted admirer?” inquired Blake, as she passed him.
Don saw the color spring to Miss Winthrop’s cheeks, but she hurried on without a word in reply. He understood now what it was she did not like about Blake. Don was not at all of an aggressive nature, but at that moment he could92have struck the man with the greatest satisfaction. It seemed the only adequate way of expressing himself. Blake was still smiling.
“Sort of caught her with the goods that time, eh?” observed Blake.
“I don’t get you,” answered Don.
“Candy by messenger? Well, I’ve been looking for it. And when those haughty ones do fall, believe me, they fall hard.”
“Maybe,” answered Don. “But I’ll bet you five dollars to a quarter you’re wrong about her.”
Blake’s eyes narrowed a trifle.
“I’ll take you,” he answered. “What’s your proof?”
“I sent her that stuff myself.”
“You? Holy smoke, that’s going some!”
“I sent her that to pay for some typewriting she did for me and because I knew she wouldn’t take any money.”
“I lose. Come out and have a drink?”
“Thanks,” answered Don. “I’m on my way uptown. Give that quarter to Eddie.”
93CHAPTER IXIT WILL NEVER DO
If Miss Winthrop ever had more than a nodding acquaintance with Mr. Pendleton, she gave no indication of that fact when she came in the next morning. With a face as blank as a house closed for the season, she clicked away at her typewriter until noon, and then hurried out to lunch as if that were a purely business transaction also. Don followed a little sooner than usual. The little restaurant was not at all crowded to-day, but she was not there. He waited ten minutes, and as he waited the conviction grew that she did not intend to come.
Don went out and began an investigation. He visited five similar places in the course of the next fifteen minutes, and in the last one he found her. She was seated in a far corner, and she was huddled up as if trying to make herself as inconspicuous as possible. As he strode to her side with uplifted hat, she shrank away like a hunted thing finding itself trapped.
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“What did you run away for?” he demanded.
“What did you hunt me up for?” she replied.
“Because I wanted to see you.”
“And I came here because I didnotwant to see you.”
“Now, look here––” he began.
“So I should think you’d go along and leave me alone,” she interrupted.
“If I did that, then I’d never know what the trouble is all about,” he explained.
“Well, what of it?”
“May I sit down?”
There was an empty chair next to her.
“I can’t prevent you, but I’ve told you I want to be alone.”
“When you look that way, you’re just as much alone as if I weren’t here,” he returned, as he took the chair. “And every one knows it.”
She gave a swift glance about the room, as if expecting to find half the crowd looking at her.
“Maybe they are too polite to let on,” he continued; “but I know just what they are95saying to themselves. They are saying, ‘She certainly hasn’t much use for him. You’d think he’d take the tip and get out.’”
“You don’t seem to care much, then, about what they say.”
“I don’t care a hang,” he admitted.
She pushed her plate away as if ready to go.
“Wait a minute,” he pleaded. “It doesn’t seem like you to go off and leave a man in the dark. How in thunder am I going to know any better next time if you don’t tell me where I made the break?”
“I don’t believe you’d know if I did tell you,” she answered more gently.
“The least you can do is to try.”
She did not want to tell him. If he was sincere––and the longer she talked with him, the more convinced she was that this was the case––then she did not wish to disillusionize him.
“The least you can do is to give me a chance,” he persisted.
“The mistake came in the beginning, Mr. Pendleton,” she said, with an effort. “And it was all my fault. You––you seemed so different from a lot of men who come into the96office that I––well, I wanted to see you get started straight. In the three years I’ve been there I’ve picked up a lot of facts that aren’t much use to me because––because I’m just Miss Winthrop. So I thought I could pass them on.”
“That was mighty white of you,” he nodded.
The color flashed into her cheeks.
“I thought I could do that much without interfering in any other way with either of our lives.”
“Well?”
“There were two or three things I didn’t reckon with,” she answered.
“What were they?” he demanded.
“Blake is one of them.”
“Blake?” His face brightened with sudden understanding. “Then the trouble is all about that box of candy?”
“You shouldn’t have sent it. You should have known better than to send it. You––had no right.”
“But that was nothing. You were so darned good to me about the typewriting and it was all I could think of.”
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“So, you see,” she concluded, “it won’t do. It won’t do at all.”
“I don’t see,” he returned.
“Then it’s because you didn’t see the way Blake looked at me,” she said.
“Yes, I saw,” he answered. “I could have hit him for it. But I fixed that.”
“You––fixed that?” she gasped.
“I certainly did. I told him I sent the box, and told him why.”
“Oh!” she exclaimed. “Then they’ll all know, and––what am I going to do? Oh, what am I going to do?”
It was a pitiful cry. He did not understand why it was so intense, because he did not see what she saw––the gossip increasing in maliciousness; the constant watching and nods and winks, until in the end it became intolerable either to her or to Farnsworth. Nor was that the possible end. To leave an office under these conditions was a serious matter––a matter so serious as to affect her whole future.
“Now, see here,” he pleaded. “Don’t take it so hard. You’re making too much of it. Blake isn’t going to talk any more. If he does––”
98
She raised her head.
“If he does, there isn’t anything you can do about it.”
“I’ll bet there is.”
“No––no––no. There isn’t. I know! But you mustn’t come here any more. And you mustn’t talk to me any more. Then perhaps they’ll forget.”
He grew serious.
“It seems too bad if it’s got to be that way,” he answered.
“I ought to have known,” she said.
“And I ought to have known, too. I was a fool to send that box into the office, but I wanted you to get it before you went home.”
She raised her eyes to his a moment. Then a queer, tender expression softened her mouth.
“This is the end of it,” she answered. “And now I’m glad you did not know any better.”
She rose to go, and then she noticed that he had not lunched.
“I’ll wait here until you come back with your sandwich,” she said.
“I don’t want a sandwich,” he protested.
“Please hurry.”
99
So she waited there until he came back with his lunch, and then she held out her hand to him.
“To-morrow you go to the old place,” she said, “and I’ll come here.”
100CHAPTER XDICTATION
As far as Don was concerned, Miss Winthrop, instead of merely changing her lunch-place, might just as well have taken a steamer and sailed for Europe. He saw her at her desk every morning when he came in, and she always looked up and nodded––as she did, for that matter, to every one, including Blake. Then she turned to her work, and that was the end of her until the next morning. As far as he was able to judge, Miss Winthrop had completely and utterly forgotten the preceding weeks and even the incident that led to this disastrous climax.
But the situation that left her so unaffected got on Don’s nerves. He was by nature too much of a social being to endure being left to himself very long. This lunching alone day after day was a dreary affair. The egg sandwiches began to pall upon his taste, and he felt that he could not have eaten an éclair had he been starving.