TWO GIRLS
That night, when Miss Winthrop took her place in the Elevated on her
way to the uptown room that made her home, she dropped her evening
paper in her lap, and, chin in hand, stared out of the window. That
was decidedly unusual. It was so unusual that a young man who had
taken this same train with her month after month, and who had rather a
keen eye for such things, noticed for the first time that she had in
profile rather an attractive face. She was wondering just how
different this Pendleton was from the other men she met. Putting aside
for a moment all generalizations affecting the sex as a whole, he was
not like any of them. For the first time in a long while she found
herself inclined to accept a man for just what he appeared to be. It
was difficult not to believe in Pendleton's eyes, and still more
difficult not to believe in his smile, which made her smile back. And
yet, if she had learned anything, those were the very things in a man
she had learned to question.
Not that she was naturally cynical, but her downtown experience had
left her very skeptical about her ability to judge men from such
details. Blake, for instance, could smile as innocently as a child and
meet any woman's eyes without flinching. But there was this difference
between Blake and Pendleton: the latter was new to New York. He was
fresh to the city, as four years ago she had been. In those days she
had dreamed of such a man as Pendleton--a dream that she was sure she
had long since forgotten. Four years was a long while. It gave her
rather a motherly feeling as she thought of Pendleton from that
distance. And she rather enjoyed that. It left her freer to continue
thinking of him. This she did until she was almost carried beyond her
street.
After that she almost forgot to stop at the delicatessen store for her
rolls and butter and cold meat. She hurried with them to her
room--hurried because she was anxious to reach the place where she was
more at liberty than anywhere else on earth. She tossed aside her hat
and coat and sat by the radiator to warm her hands.
She wondered if Pendleton would go the same way Blake had gone. It was
so very easy to go the one way or the other. Farnsworth himself never
helped. His theory was to allow new men to work out their own
salvation, and to fire them if they did not. He had done that with
young Brown, who came in last year; and it had seemed to her then a
pity--though she had never liked Brown. This was undoubtedly what he
would do with Pendleton.
But supposing--well, why shouldn't she take an interest in Pendleton
to the extent of preventing such a finish if she could? There need be
nothing personal in such an interest; she could work it out as an
experiment.
Miss Winthrop, now thoroughly warm, began to prepare her supper. She
spread a white cloth upon her table, which was just large enough to
seat one. She placed upon this one plate, one cup and saucer, one
knife and fork and spoon. It was a very simple matter to prepare
supper for one. She sliced her small portion of cold meat and placed
this on the table. She removed her rolls from a paper bag and placed
them beside the cold meat. By this time the hot water was ready, and
she took a pinch of tea, put it in her tea-ball, and poured hot water
over it in her cup. Then she took her place in the one chair.
But, oddly enough, although there was no place for him, another seemed
to be with her in the room.
* * * * *
"Let me have your engagement-book a moment," Frances requested.
Don complied. He had taken his dinner that night at the dairy lunch,
and after returning to the house to dress had walked to his
fiancee's.
Frances puckered her brows.
"You are to have a very busy time these next few weeks," she informed
him. "Let me see--to-day is Wednesday. On Friday we are to go to the
Moores'. Evelyn's debutante dance, you know."
She wrote it in his book.
"On Saturday we go to the opera. The Warringtons have asked us to a
box party."
She wrote that.
"Next Wednesday comes the Stanley cotillion. Have you received your
invitation?"
"Haven't seen it," he answered.
"The Stanleys are always unpardonably late, but I helped Elise make
out her list. On the following Friday we dine at the Westons'."
She wrote that.
"On the following Saturday I'm to give a box party at the opera--the
Moores and Warringtons."
She added that, and looked over the list.
"And I suppose, after going to this trouble, I'll have to remind you
all over again on the day of each event."
"Oh, I don't know; but--" He hesitated.
"Well?" she demanded.
"Seems to me we are getting pretty gay, aren't we?"
"Don't talk like an old man!" she scolded. "So far, this has been a
very stupid season."
"But--"
"Well?"
"You know, now I'm in business--"
"Please don't remind me of that any more than is necessary," she
interrupted.
"Oh, all right; only, I do have to get up in the morning."
"Why remind me of that? It's disagreeable enough having to think of it
even occasionally."
"But I do, you know."
"I know it, Don. Honestly I do."
She seated herself on the arm of his chair, with an arm about his neck
and her cheek against his hair.
"And I think it quite too bad," she assured him--"which is why I don't
like to talk about it."
She sprang to her feet again.
"Now, Don, you must practice with me some of the new steps. You'll get
very rusty if you don't."
"I'd rather hear you sing," he ventured.
"This is much more important," she replied.
She placed a Maxixe record on the Victrola that stood by the piano;
then she held out her arms to him.
"Poor old hard-working Don!" she laughed as he rose.
It was true that it was as poor old hard-working Don he moved toward
her. But there was magic in her lithe young body; there was magic in
her warm hand; there was magic in her swimming eyes. As he fell into
the rhythm of the music and breathed the incense of her hair, he was
whirled into another world--a world of laughter and melody and
care-free fairies. But the two most beautiful fairies of all were her
two beautiful eyes, which urged him to dance faster and faster, and
which left him in the end stooping, with short breaths, above her
upturned lips.