“I shan’t forget,” said Dick.
He took out a small note-book and wrote down the address she gave him. And she gave herself a little shake and pulled out a much larger note-book. “I ought not to waste my time and yours this way, but, you see, I’m not much of a business woman. I sometimes forget altogether.”
Dick thought her very preposterous and charming as she set to work with an air of severity; and so she was—the last thing on earth made to do serious work. They leaned together over one treasure after another, in that electric nearness that moves youth so easily, and sends a tingling sensation up the backbone.
When she suddenly rose, her cheeks were pinker and more transparent than ever, and her eyes softer and dreamier.
“Let me take you home in the motor,” said Dick.
“Dear me, no,” Lena exclaimed. “I’m afraid you think me entirely too informal already. I—I’m so stupid and impulsive. I’m always doing wrong things and not thinking till afterward. Good-by, and thank you, Mr. Percival.”
After he had bowed her out, Dick plunged into a big chair and spent a few moments in analyzing his own character. He perceived that in some ways he differed from most of his friends. Now Ellery and Madeline and most of the others lived along certain conventional lines, with certain fixed interests and habits. That kind of existence would be intolerable to him. He liked to star his days with all kinds of colored incidents that had no particular relation to his main work. He liked to run down every by-path, explore it a bit, and then come back to the highway. Those small excursions were apt to take a man into leafy dells where there were ferns and flowers too shy to fringe the dusty plodding thoroughfare. Dick liked that figure. It revealed to him a certain lightness of heart and poetry in himself that distinguished him from the prosy grubbers. This sprinkling of life with episodes was like a little tonic. It kept him vivid and alive.
Take this very afternoon just passed. It meant little, of course, either to him or to the pretty little pathetic reporter girl, but it had injected a bit of pleasure into her routine, and given him an insight into another kind of maiden from the well-kept, sheltered women he knew best. Such things help a man’s larger sympathies. He was glad that he could enjoy many types of men and women.
A rumble of wheels outside brought him out of this particular by-path into the highway.
“What a dispensation that the mater didn’t come home in the middle of it!” he said with a sigh of satisfaction.