"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.
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 s.p.a.ce.
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.
She placed the flowers on the table when she had her supper. All night long they filled the room with their fragrance.
CHAPTER VIII
A 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. In 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.
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 of its 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 "h.e.l.lo." 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 s.e.x. 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.
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."