"Only three cents," he answered.
"And you begin work to-day?"
"Yes."
"It"s only Tuesday, and you won"t get paid until Sat.u.r.day."
"So?"
"Do you expect to make that eclair go until then?"
"I hadn"t thought much about it," he answered uneasily.
"You don"t look as if you would," she said. "You are new to this, aren"t you?"
"Yes."
He did not resent her questioning; and it did not occur to him to give her an evasive reply.
"Just out of college?"
"Last fall."
"What you been doing since then?"
"Why, nothing," he admitted. "You see, my father died only last month, and--"
"Oh, I see," she said more gently. "That"s hard luck."
"It makes a good deal of a difference," he said.
"I know."
It had made a difference in her life when her father died.
She turned to her eclair; but, as she was raising the fork to her lips, she caught his eyes and put it down again.
"Look here," she said; "you must eat something. You can"t get along without food. I"ve tried it."
"You!" he exclaimed.
"Indeed, yes."
"Dieting?"
"Hardly," she replied grimly.
He had heard of men going perforce without food, but he did not remember ever having heard of a woman in that predicament. Certainly he had never before met one.
"You mean that you"ve gone broke, too?"
"Why, certainly," she answered. "The firm I was with first went broke, and it was a couple of months before I found another position. But that"s over now. What I want to know is what _you"re_ going to do until Sat.u.r.day."
"Oh, I"ll worry along," he answered confidently.
She shook her head.
"Worry won"t carry you along."
She hesitated a moment, and then said impulsively:--
"Now, look here--don"t get peeved at what I"m going to say, will you?"
"I don"t believe it"s possible to get peeved with you," he declared.
She frowned.
"Well, let it go at that. What I want to do is to lend you a couple of dollars until Sat.u.r.day. It isn"t much, but--"
Don caught his breath. "You--"
She did not give him time to finish. From somewhere she produced a two-dollar bill and slipped it into his hand.
"Take this and get an egg sandwich right now."
"But look here--"
"Don"t talk. Go get a sandwich."
He seemed to have no alternative; but when he came back with it she had disappeared.
He sat down, but he could not understand why she should have gone like that. He missed her--missed her more than he would have thought possible, considering that he had met her only some two hours before.
Without her this place seemed empty and foreign. Without her he felt uneasy here. He hurried through his sandwich and went out--anxious to get back to her.
CHAPTER V
BUSINESS
When Don came back to the office he found Miss Winthrop again at her typewriter, but she did not even glance up as he took his former place at Powers"s desk. If this was not particularly flattering, it at least gave him the privilege of watching her. But it was rather curious that he found in this enough to hold his attention for half an hour. It is doubtful whether he could have watched Frances herself for so long a time without being bored.
It was the touch of seriousness about the girl"s eyes and mouth that now set him to wondering--a seriousness that he had sometimes noted in the faces of men who had seen much of life.
Life--that was the keynote. He felt that she had been in touch with life, and had got the better of it: that there had been drama in her past, born of contact with men and women. She had been dealing with such problems as securing food--and his experience of the last twenty-four hours had hinted at how dramatic that may be; with securing lodgings for the night; with the problem of earning not more money but enough money to keep her alive. All this had left its mark, not in ugliness, but in a certain seriousness that made him keen to know about her. Here was a girl who was not especially concerned with operas, with books, with the drama, but with the stuff of which those things are made.