The Wall Street Girl

“That’s the only thing in this case that does matter,” he returned.

“You wait until you know Blake,” she answered.

“Of course, if any one is to quit here, it is I,” he said.

“You’d better stay where you are,” she answered. “I know a lot of other places just like this.”

“Well, I can find them, can’t I?”

She laughed–a contagious little laugh.

“I’m not so sure,” she replied.

“You don’t think much of my ability, do you?” he returned, somewhat nettled.

She lifted her eyes at that.

“If you want to know the truth,” she said, “I do. And I’ve seen a lot of ’em come and go.”

He reacted curiously to this unexpected praise. His color heightened and unconsciously he squared his shoulders.

“Thanks,” he said. “Then you ought to trust me to be able to find another lunch-place. Besides, you forget I found this myself. Are you going to have an éclair to-day?”

She nodded and started to rise.

“Sit still; I’ll get it for you.”

Before she could protest he was halfway to the counter. She sat back in her chair with an expression that was half-frown and half-smile.

When he came back she slipped a nickel upon the arm of his chair.

“What’s this for?” he demanded.

“For the éclair, of course.”

“You–you needn’t have done that.”

“I’ll pay my own way, thank you,” she answered, her face hardening a little.

“Now you’re offended again?”

“No; only–oh, can’t you see we–I must find another place?”

“No, I don’t,” he answered.

“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.

CHAPTER VI

TWO 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 were the 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 aside her 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 removed her 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.

“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.