“You children seem so fascinated by Mr. Druid—would you like to meet him?”
“Do you know him, Geraldine?” The question was chorused eagerly.
“I have known him all my life,” was the reply. “We were neighbors in Richmond, raised together as children, attended the same high-school, and graduated from the same class.”
“Well, why in the world didn’t you say so before?” Rosebud Greely pouted as though she had been personally injured, as she pulled her skirts higher for more comfort for her crossed legs with their bare knees visible above her rolled-down silk stockings. “Pigging it, I’d call it—wanted him all to yourself, I suppose. And you knew what play we were coming to see, and who was starring in it?”
Geraldine DeLacy smiled tolerantly.
“Don’t fly off so quickly, dear,” she advised. “I didn’t know myself till just now, for how could I imagine that Thomas Temple, a boy from my home town, whom I haven’t seen in years, was this Templeton Druid, popular Broadway star. I knew he always had a soaring ambition to become an actor, but I could never dream of his going this far in so short a time.”
“Isn’t it wonderfully interesting and romantic?” Nell Thurston, her eyes aglow with excitement, wanted to know more.
“You asked about our caring to meet him. Can you manage it, Geraldine?” Elinor Benton was all eagerness.
“Easily enough,” Geraldine shrugged her handsome shoulders as she replied. “I’ll send back a note asking him to join us at the Waldorf for tea after the matinée. He’ll be there—” There was a worldly meaning in her last words that even her sophisticated charges failed to get.
“How positively thrilling!” Rosebud giggled. “Do you know I’ve never talked to a real actor in my life?”