His florid face was alight, enthusiasm wellnigh choking him. She heard him out with an excitement almost as great as his own. As he finished she clapped her hands with a little laugh of utter delight.
“Oh, splendid!” she exclaimed. “No one but you would ever have thought of it. It’s—” her flush of pleasure yielding momentarily to a look of troubled query—“It’s perfectly—honest, of course?”
“It’s business,” he replied.
“That’s the same thing, I suppose,” she said, much relieved, “And you’re rich?”
“A million anyway. And you’ll—”
“Hell!”
Both turned at the wonder-inspired, sulphurous monosyllable. Desirée jerked the curtain aside, revealing a stocky small boy, very red of face. He was clutching a blue bath robe about him and had no apparent aim in life save to escape from the situation into which his involuntary expletive had betrayed him.
“Now don’t go callin’ me down, Dey,” he pleaded. “I just happened to be going past—I was on the way to take my bath, all right—on the level I was—an’ I heard Mr. Conover say about havin’ a million. An’—an’—I spoke without thinkin’.”
He had been edging toward the stair-foot as he talked. Now, finding the lower step behind him, he fled upward on pattering desperate feet.
“Poor Billy!” laughed Desirée, “He’s an awfully good little chap. But he will listen. I can’t break him of it.”