"He was there. In fact he opened the door and assisted her to alight."
"You were very reckless, giving him a dollar," he criticised severely, but not forgetting that he had given five the night before. He had been wondering all the morning if she had noticed the cocktails.
"It is so good of you to come down," she said, a color in her cheeks that was not from the cold. He was marveling. Never, in all his life, had he seen any one so pretty as this trim, proud young person in the Persian lamb coat and ermine stole and muff. She gauged his thoughts. "Presents from Mrs. Scoville—in advance of Christmas," she said dryly. He was properly embarrassed. "Now, I must ask about the trains."
"It's all attended to, Miss Pembroke," he said. "I got here at half-past twelve, lunchless. Boat in ten minutes, train out of Jersey City at two o'clock, positively. We can have luncheon on the train." He seemed a bit embarrassed, as he ought to have been, in truth.
She stood still and looked at him. "On the train?" she murmured.
"Yes, Miss Pembroke. I have an afternoon off. I'm going to Princeton. Oh, by the way, don't bother about the tickets. I have them. Come along, please, or we'll miss the boat."
Of course she protested. She was very much annoyed—or, at least, that is what she meant to be.
He explained, in a burst of confidence meant to cover the unique trepidation he felt, that he was not to assume his duties as secretary to Mr. Krosson until the following Monday. "This is my last free week. Don't begrudge me an excursion. It's to take the place of four house parties."
She held out stubbornly, for appearance's sake; it was not until they were in the middle of the Hudson that she said it would be very nice, and he could catch the five o'clock train back to New York.
It would be difficult to relate all that they said during the tortuous trip to Princeton. Naturally they discussed his prospects.
"I'm not sure that I know what a secretary has to do," he confessed. "But," with a determined gleam in his eyes, "whatever it is, I'm going to do it. I don't expect Mr. Krosson to give me a year's vacation on full pay, and I'm not looking for furs in my stocking at this or any other Christmas, but I do mean to live on what I earn. I'm to have twenty-five hundred a year, in the beginning."
"Goodness, that is a lot of money," she said. They were at luncheon in the private dining car.
"I'll retain my membership in two clubs. I'm starting out to-morrow to find a couple of cozy rooms in a genteel apartment hotel."
"Have you broken the news to your father?"
He laughed. "No. I stopped at his room to see if he had pneumonia. He said he was asleep and couldn't tell—and for me to go to the devil."
From the car window they watched the great white sea through which they were gliding. Their hearts were free and their hearts were sparkling. Constantly recurring in their thoughts were the little forgotten things of that memorable voyage across the Atlantic. It was he, however, who presumed to steal surreptitious glances in which wonder was uppermost; she steadfastly declined to be led by her impulses.
"You've never heard anything particularly terrible about me, have you?" he demanded, rather anxiously, once in course of a duet of personalities.
"Only that a great many women are in love with you."
"It's funny I've never heard that," he said dolefully.
"Men say that you are an exceptionally decent chap and it's too bad you'll never amount to anything."
"Oh, they do, do they?" indignantly.
"I think they'll be stunned when they hear of your latest move."
"Well, I'll show 'em what I'm made of."
"Splendid! I like to hear you speak in that way."
"You do?" he asked eagerly. "You do think I'll make good, don't you?"
"What station is this?" she asked deliberately.
"Rahway," he said, leaning close to her in order to see the name on the station.
"I think I'll have a holiday on Christmas," he ventured carefully. "That's next week, you know. May I come down to Princeton for the afternoon and evening?"
"To see me?" She seemed surprised.
"Yes," he said simply. She had expected some frivolous reply. Her gaze wavered ever so slightly as it met his.
"It will be a very dull way to spend Christmas," she said.
"Christmas is always a dull day," he said, so imploringly that she laughed. He came very near to adding, irrelevantly, that she was prettier than ever when she smiled.
"When there are no children about," he succeeded in saying, as an amend for his slip.
"There are two in our house, besides myself," she said gayly.
"Splendid!" he cried enthusiastically. "Can't we have a tree?"
On the platform at Princeton he was introduced to two small and very pretty young ladies, six and eight, and to a resentful gallant aged nine, who seemed to look upon him with disfavor. It afterwards developed that he was the characteristic neighbor boy who loves beyond his years. He adored Miss Pembroke.
"Mr. Van Pycke is coming down for Christmas," announced Miss Pembroke, in course of time, drawing her little sisters close to her side and smiling upon the dazzled gallant, aged nine.
"Will you play bear for me?" asked the young lady aged six, after a sly look at her nurse.
"The whole menagerie," said Mr. Van Pycke, most obligingly. Then, having occupied a perilously long time in shaking hands with the girl in the Persian lamb, he rushed off in response to the station master's satirical warning that last night's train was just pulling out for New York.
"I know just what's going to happen to me," he said to himself, jubilantly, as he waved to her from the window. "I can feel it coming."