"Oh, she must have thought that I was asking her if she wasn't gay! Gay with a little g!" she gasped. "No wonder she looked at me so freezingly."
She was so perturbed by this discovery, that she walked on, unmindful of the direction. When a group of children crowded past her on the narrow pavement, she turned into a side street to avoid being jostled, and walked aimlessly for some distance. It was the sight of a green kettle swinging above a door which she was approaching that brought her to herself with a start. Mrs. Rochester had told her to stop at the Sign of the Green Kettle for lunch, and had given her directions for finding it. Here she had stumbled upon it unaware, just as the city bells were beginning to clang for noon.
At the next glance her heart went to thumping so hard that she could plainly hear it. There on the step leading up to the door of the Green Kettle, stood Gay Melville; the real Gay this time. There was no shadow of doubt about it. As she looked, Mary wondered how she ever could have mistaken the other girl for her, although each had hair wonderfully like the other.
This one carried a violin case. She had paused on her way in to call back something to the girl in the carriage, who had brought her down town. And the girl in the carriage was Roberta—Roberta of the boyish speech and coquettish eyelashes, whose laughing question held the girl on the step long enough for Mary to reach it too, and stand there beside her while she gathered courage to speak.
It was the little pin thrust through Gay's tie which finally brought the words trembling to Mary's lips, for it was the Warwick Hall pin which only its alumni might wear; those who had kept the four years' tryst with all its requirements. It was a mailed hand rising from a heart to grasp a spear, the motto and the crest of Edryn.
All diffidence fled at that familiar sight, but this time Mary did not ask if the girl were gay. With a gesture toward the pin she cried breathlessly, "Oh, I know by that that you are Miss Melville. Aren't you!" Gay after one look into the eager gray eyes said quite as cordially, "And you're Mary Ware! I had a letter from Betty Lewis this very morning telling me to be sure to find you."
She gave a quick glance at the chatelaine watch she wore. "I haven't a minute to stop—I'm to play an obligato for the great prima donna, Madame de Martel, and she has a beast of a temper which she lets loose if a person is one second late at rehearsal. But I must take time to say one thing if she wipes me off the face of the earth for it. The girls' letters have made me wild to know you. At what hotel can I find you? I'll call this very day."
"We've taken a cottage in Bauer," Mary answered hastily. "I came down on a little shopping expedition, and am on my way in here for luncheon."
The heavy chords of a piano accompaniment rolled threateningly through the music rooms up-stairs, and Gay shrugged her shoulders impatiently. "Do be a long time over it," she begged as she turned towards the stairs. "I'll get through as quickly as possible and hurry back for another word with you."
Mary watched her out of sight before starting into the dining-room of the Green Kettle, and then deliberately pinched herself to make sure that she was awake. It was a good hard nip, which hurt, and smiling to herself because it proved that she was not dreaming, she sat down at a table near the window to gloat over the fact that one of her best dreams had come true at last. She had met Gay Melville.