n the knowledge that her mother was furious,
her own fortune ample, and that marrying for love was a graceful,
becoming pose and an unusual thing to do.
Her rejected suitor bore his disappointment as correctly as he had borne
his joy. He stormed the special center of philanthropy in which old
Marvin's little girl had buried herself, and she was most incorrectly
but refreshingly glad to see him. She destroyed forever his poise and
his pride in it when she sat upon his unaccustomed knee, rested her
tired head upon his immaculate shirt front, and wept for very happiness.
* * * * *
"And I remember," said Miss Knowles, "that you always take cream."
"Nothing, thank you," Jimmie corrected. "Just plain unadulterated tea. I
learned to like it in Japan. But don't bother about it. I haven't long
to stay. I came in to tell you--"
"That you're going to be married."
"How did you guess?"
"You didn't leave me to guess. Your telegram."
"Ah, yes!" quoth Jimmie. "I sent a lot of them before I sailed. But in
my letters--"
"You mentioned absolutely nothing but that stupid old Drewitt affair.
Never a word of the places you saw, the people you met, or even the
people you missed. Nothing of the customs, the girls, the clothes.
Nothing but that shuffling old Drewitt and his stuffy old wife. Nothing
about yourself."
"Orders are orders," quoth Jimmie, "and those were yours to me. I
remember exactly how it came about. We had been talking personalities. I
have an idea that I made rather a fool of myself, and that you told me
so. Then you, wisely conjecturing that I might write as foolishly as I
had talked, made out a list of subjects for my letters. My name, I noted
with some care, was not upon that list."
"Jimmie," said Miss Knowles, "I was cruel and heartless that day. I've
thought about it often."
"You've thought!" cried the genial Jimmie. "How had you time to think?
Where were all those 'anothers'?"
"There were none," lied Miss Knowles soulfully with a disdainful
backward glance toward Mr. Stevenson. "For a time I thought there was
one. But whenever I thought of that last talk of ours--you remember it,
don't you?"
"Of course. I told you I was going to be married as soon as I came home.
Well, and so I am."
"So you are. But I used to think that if you hesitated to tell me; if
you felt that I might still be hard about it and unsympathetic; if you
decided to confide no more in me--"
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