"Hello," said Russell's voice, "how about that fitting?"
"I don't know. I'm horribly busy to-day."
"It's very important. I--I can't go ahead without it."
"Oh, all right," I said. Madge was listening and I had to be careful. "I
must have the suit."
"You can have anything I've got. How about the Art Gallery? Art is long
and time is fleeting. Nobody goes there."
"Very well, four o'clock," I replied, and rang off.
"Rather a nice voice," Madge said, eying me. "Think I'll go along, Kit.
I've been shut up in school until the mere thought of even a
good-looking tailor makes me thrill."
She was so insistent that I had to go to mother finally, and mother told
her she would have to practise. She was furious. Really, mother turned
out to be a most understanding person. I got to be quite fond of her. We
had a chat that afternoon that brought us closer together than ever.
"Things are doing pretty well, mother," I said when she'd finished
Madge.
"He must be interested when he would take that absurd name."
"And the Art Gallery! I dare say he has never voluntarily been inside of
one in his life."
"Kit," mother said, "what about your father?"
"Haven't you told him?"
"No; he wouldn't understand."
Of course not. I knew men well enough for that. They believe that life
and marriage arrange themselves. That it's all a sort of combination of
Providence and chance. Predestination plus opportunity!
"Can't you tell him you've heard something about Russell, and that he'd
better be cool to him?"
"And have him turn the man down if it really comes to a proposal!"
"That won't matter," I told her. "We'll probably elope anyhow."
Mother opposed that vigorously. She said that no matter how good a match
it was, there was always something queer about an elopement. And anyhow
she'd been giving wedding gifts for years and it was time something came
in instead of going out. It was the only point we differed on.
Well, father did his best to queer things that very day. All the way
through I played in hard luck. Just when things were going right
something happened.
I met Russell at the Art Gallery. It was a cold day, but I left my muff
at home. It was about time for the coat-pocket business. I couldn't
afford to wait, for one or two of the girls were wearing their hair like
mine, and I'd heard that Toots Warrington had gone to Russell and asked
him how he liked kindergartening. Bessie Willing, who told me, said that
Russell's reply was:
"It's rather pleasant. I'm reversing things. Instead of going from the
cradle to the grave, I'm going from the grave to the cradle."
I don't believe he said it. In the first place, he is too polite. In the
second place, he is too stupid. But as Toots is not young he may have
thought of it.
He was waiting near a heater, and we sat down together. I shivered.
"Cold, honey?" he asked.
"Hands are cold. Do you mind if I put one in your coat pocket?"
Did he mind? He did not. He was very polite at first and emptied the
pocket of various things, including a letter which he mentioned casually
was a bill. But after a moment he slid his hand in on top of mine.
"You're a wonderful young person," he said, "and you've got me going."
Then he squeezed the hand until it hurt. Suddenly he looked up.
"Great Scott!" he said. "There's Henry!"
Of course it was Henry. He had brought a catalogue and was going
painstakingly from one picture to another. He did not see us at first,
and we had time to stand up and be looking at a landscape when he got to
us. He looked moderately surprised and waited to mark something in the
catalogue before he joined us.
"Bully show, isn't it?" he said cheerfully. "Never saw so many good
'uns. Well, what are you children up to?"
"Dropped in to get warm," said Russell. And I was going to add
something, but Henry's interest in us had passed evidently. He marked
another cross in the catalogue and went on, with the light shining on
his red hair and his soul clearly as uplifted as his chin.
"You needn't worry about Henry," I said. "He's a friend of the family,
and I'll just call him up and tell him not to say anything."
"I used to think he was fond of you."
"That's all over," I said casually. "It was just one of the things that
comes and goes. Like this little--acquaintance of ours."
"What do you mean, goes?" he demanded almost fiercely.
"They always do, don't they? Awfully pleasant things don't last. And we
can't go on meeting indefinitely. Some one will tell father, and then
where will I be?"
That was a wrong move about father.
"That reminds me," he said. "Are you sure your father dislikes me such a
lot?"
"Don't let's talk about it," I said, and closed my eyes.
"Because I met him to-day, and he nearly fell on my neck and hugged me."
Can you beat that? I was stunned.
"The more he detests people," I managed finally, "the more polite he
is."
Then I took off my gloves and fell to rubbing the fingers of my left
hand. And he moved round and put it in the other coat pocket without a
word, with his hand over it, and the danger was past, for the time
anyhow.
Mother came round that evening about the elopement.
"Perhaps you are right, Katherine," she said. "A lot of people will send
things when the announcement cards go out. And Russell can afford to buy
you anything you want anyhow."
Madge was a nuisance all that week. She was always at the telephone
first when it rang, and I did not like her tone when she said it was
Herschenrother again. Once I could have sworn that I saw her following
me, but she ducked into a shop when I turned round.
She had transferred her affections to Henry, and he took her to a
cotillon or two for the school set, and played round with the youngsters
generally, and showed her a sweet time, as she said.
But once when mother and I had been shut in my room, going over my
clothes and making notes of what I would take with me, if the thing came
to an elopement--I was pretty sure by that time, and we planned a sort
of week-end outfit without riding things--I opened the door suddenly,
and Madge was just outside.
Well, we got her back to school finally, and Henry took her to the
train. I remember mother's watching them as they got into the car
together.
"That wouldn't be so bad for Madge," she said reflectively. "She is
bound to marry badly anyhow, she's so impulsive, and Henry would be a
good counterweight. He is very dependable."
"She would make him most unhappy," I said. "Probably Henry would be all
right for Madge, but how about Madge for Henry?"
Mother looked at me and said nothing.
Russell proposed at the end of the next week, and I refused. He proposed
in a movie. We'd had to give up the Art Gallery because Henry was always
taking people through it. He took Toots one afternoon, and that finished
us.
There was a little talk that Henry and Toots were getting rather thick.
The army man's leave was up, and she had to have somebody. There was
probably something to it. We saw them in the park one afternoon sitting
on a bench, and I could have sworn she had her hand in his coat pocket!
Well, I refused Russell.
"Why?" he said. "You're crazy about me, and you know it."
"I'm not going to marry a past," I said. "You'd make me horribly
unhappy."
"I'd never bore you, that's one thing."
"No, but you might find me dull."
"Dull! Darling girl, I've never had as interesting a month in my life."