Her hot anger began to cool, to harden into an emotion which she did not
comprehend. She stared back at Louis, at first with scorn, but after a
moment with puzzled curiosity. Had he always looked like this? Never any
different from this?
“You look so kind of funny to-day!” she observed wonderingly.
“Funny? What d’you mean, funny?” he demanded.
“I don’t know,” she said, still staring at him. “Just--so kind
of--measly.”
His swarthy face turned dark red, and in a low voice he made a forcible
retort; but Miss Riordan was past anger. She was looking at her bouquet,
lifting up the drooping heads with anxious care.
“I’ll dry ’em in a nice little jar,” she thought. “I guess they’ll keep
forever that way.”
Louis was still talking.
“You’d better go away,” she said casually. “I’m going down to the
island.”
He got up promptly.
“I’ll go, all right!” said he. “An’ you can git down on your knees an’
beg me, an’ I’ll never come back. Let me tell you--”
“Oh, go on!” said Miss Riordan with mild impatience.
He walked away, swaggering, his gray felt hat to one side, his toes
pointed out, his curly hair pushed up at the back of the neck by his
high collar. He passed through the turnstile and out of the ferry house,
and then, as far as she was concerned, he ceased to exist. Miss Riordan
got up and sauntered toward the gates.
“He’s gone,” she thought. “He’d come back if I’d ask him, but I won’t!”
This was true. Mr. Pirini’s charm had been completely dissolved in his
laughter. He had refused to believe in her gentleman.
Thinking of that elderly cavalier, her heart swelled with enormous
aspirations. Here she was going to the country for a ramble, and
carrying a high-class magazine and that mystically precious bouquet. It
seemed to her that a monstrous burden had been lifted from her
shoulders. Shame, resentment, and miserable anxiety had departed with
Mr. Pirini.
She raised the bouquet to her face and sniffed it vigorously.
“I’m going to get a real _comfortable_ pair of shoes!” she said to
herself. “A size--_two_ sizes--bigger!”
The freedom of Miss Riordan’s soul was achieved.
MUNSEY’S
MAGAZINE
JUNE, 1925
Vol. LXXXV NUMBER 1