As he laughed his eyes rested on a man sauntering toward them from the direction of Fifth Avenue. “I’ve known about two—” his eyes came back to smile again down into hers—“or one.” He started as a man starts who receives a new suggestion. “I say! Let’s go in and look up chicory and succory in the encyclopedia. Then we’ll know all about it. It seems to me, too,” he went on, reminiscently, “that I read a little poem about this very blue flower—by Margaret Deland, I think it was—only a few weeks ago. I believe I could put my hand on it. Come along.”
As he sprang up the steps the pearly gates were opening again before Letty when the man whom Allerton had seen sauntering toward them actually passed by. Passing he lifted his hat politely, smiled, and said, “Good afternoon, Miss Gravely,” like any other gentleman. He was a good-looking slippery young man, with a cast in his left eye.
Because she was a woman before she was a lady, as she understood the word lady, Letty responded with, “Good afternoon,” and a little inclination of the head. He was several doors off before she bethought herself sufficiently to take alarm.
“Who’s that?” Allerton demanded, looking down from the third or fourth step.
“I’m sure I haven’t an idea. I think he must be some camera-man who’s seen me when they’ve been shooting the pitch—” she made the correction almost in time—“who’s seen me when they’ve been shooting the pick-tures. I can’t think of anything else.”
They watched the retreating form till, without a backward glance, it turned into Madison Avenue.
“Come along in,” Allerton called then, in a tone intended to disperse misgiving, “and let’s begin.”
Ten minutes later he was reading in the library, from a big volume open on his knees, how for over a 232 century the chicory root had been dried and ground in France, and used to strengthen the cheaper grades of coffee, when Letty broke in, as if she had not been following him:
“I don’t think that fella could have been a camera-man after all. No camera-man would ha’ noticed me in the great big bunch I was always in.”
“Oh, well, he can’t do you any harm anyhow,” Allerton assured her. “I’ll just finish this, and then I’ll look for the poem by Mrs. Deland.”