He was full of this when, a few minutes before dinner, Frances swept down the stairs.
"I"m glad you could come, Don," she said. "But where in the world have you been all day?"
"Downtown," he answered. "I"m with Carter, Rand & Seagraves now."
He made the announcement with considerable pride.
"Poor Don!" she murmured. "But, if you"re going to do that sort of thing, I suppose you might as well be with them as any one. I wonder if that Seagraves is Dolly Seagraves"s father."
For a second he was disappointed--he had expected more enthusiasm from her.
"I haven"t met the families of the firm yet," he answered.
"I thought you knew Dolly. I"ll ask her up for my next afternoon, to meet you."
"But I can"t come in the afternoon, Frances."
"How stupid! You"re to be downtown all day?"
"From nine to three or later."
"I"m not sure I"m going to like that."
"Then you"ll have to speak to Farnsworth," he laughed.
"Farnsworth?"
"He"s the manager."
"I imagine he"s very disagreeable. Oh, Don, please hurry and make your fortune and have it over with!"
"You ought to give me more than one day, anyhow."
"I"ll give you till June," she smiled. "I really got sort of homesick for you to-day, Don."
"Honest?"
"Honest, Don. I"ve no business to tell you such a secret, but it"s true."
"I"m glad you told me," he answered soberly. "What have you been doing all day?"
"I had a stupid morning at the tailor"s, and a stupid bridge in the afternoon at the Martins". Oh, I lost a disgraceful lot of money."
"How much?" he inquired.
She shook her head. "I won"t tell; but that"s why I told Dad he must take me to see something cheerful this evening."
"Tough luck," he sympathized.
They went in to dinner. Afterward the Stuyvesant car took them all to a vaudeville house, and there, from the rear of a box, Don watched with indifferent interest the usual vaudeville turns. To tell the truth, he would have been better satisfied to have sat at the piano at home and had Frances sing to him. There were many things he had wished to talk over with her. He had not told her about the other men he had met, his adventure on his first business a.s.signment, his search for a place to lunch, or--Miss Winthrop. Until that moment he had not thought of her himself.
A singing team made their appearance and began to sing sentimental ballads concerned with apple blossoms in Normandy. Don"s thoughts went back, strangely enough, to the white-tiled restaurant in the alley. He smiled as he contrived a possible t.i.tle for a popular song of this same nature. "The White-Tiled Restaurant in the Alley" it might read, and it might have something to do with "Sally."
Perhaps Miss Winthrop"s first name was Sally--it fitted her well enough. She had been funny about that chocolate eclair. And she had lent him two dollars. Unusual incident, that! He wondered where she was to-night--where she went after she left the office at night.
Perhaps she was here. He leaned forward to look at the faces of people in the audience. Then the singing stopped, and a group of j.a.panese acrobats occupied the stage.
Frances turned, suppressing a yawn.
"I suppose one of them will hang by his teeth in a minute," she observed. "I wish he wouldn"t. It makes me ache."
"It is always possible to leave," he suggested.
"But Mother so enjoys the pictures."
"Then, by all means, let"s stay."
"They always put them at the end. Oh, dear me, I don"t think I shall ever come again."
"I enjoyed the singing," he confessed.
"Oh, Don, it was horrible!"
"Still, that song about the restaurant in the alley--"
"The _what?_" she exclaimed.
"Wasn"t it that or was it apple blossoms? Anyhow, it was good."
"Of course there"s no great difference between restaurants in alleys and apple blossoms in Normandy!" she commented.
"Not so much as you"d think," he smiled.
It was eleven before they were back at the house. Then Stuyvesant wanted a rarebit and Frances made it, so that it was after one before Don reached his own home.
Not until Nora, in obedience to a note he had left downstairs for her, called him at seven-thirty the next morning did Don realize he had kept rather late hours for a business man. Bit by bit, the events of yesterday came back to him; and in the midst of it, quite the central figure, stood Miss Winthrop. It was as if she were warning him not to be late. He jumped from bed.
But, even at that, it was a quarter-past eight before he came downstairs. Nora was anxiously waiting for him.
"You did not order breakfast, sir," she reminded him.
"Why, that"s so," he admitted.
"Shall I prepare it for you now?"
"Never mind. I haven"t time to wait, anyway. You see, I must be downtown at nine. I"m in business, Nora."
"Yes, sir; but you should eat your breakfast, sir."
He shook his head. "I think I"ll try going without breakfast this week. Besides, I didn"t send up any provisions."