“We will go up to my room,” she returned. What could their errand be if it was not on that rending subject?
“She didn’t eat anything,” reflected Miss Frink as they went up in the elevator. “I suppose they don’t when they’re in love.”
Her heart pleaded a little for Millicent, just then. Even if it were presumptuous for the girl to fall in love with Hugh, was it within youthful feminine human nature to help it when they had been thrown together daily for so long? What had been nearly superhuman was to refuse him, shut in with him in that very new, very blue, shiny roadster with all the early summer surroundings of romance. The girl had some strength, anyway. And how sweetly she had sympathized with herself at the exciting time of the discovery!
She sat down now, however, with an entirely non-committal expression, and Millicent took a place facing her. Apparently she was the one with the message. Hugh wandered to a window overlooking the sea.
How pale the girl was! The shadows under her hazel eyes had not been dust. Those eyes had apparently started out to be brown, but thought better of it. They were surpassingly clear, and they looked now directly into Miss Frink’s.
“I don’t know even yet if it was right for me to come,” she began. “Grandpa thought it wasn’t, for we haven’t the least right to trouble you in your affairs; but it means so much to Grandpa I couldn’t content myself without knowing from your own lips if you are selling our home.”
Miss Frink’s face continued set. A little frown came in her forehead.
“Not that we wouldn’t get used to the thought, but—just at first, it—he made Grandpa look so old—”
“Who did?”
“Mr. Goldstein. He wants to put up an apartment house and he was looking the ground over to see if he could save the elm.”