“Girl I’ve known quite awhile. Cashier in a shop.... Say, what you getting at, anyhow? Madeleine’s a darn nice girl, I’m here to tell the world. Looks it, too. I’d just as soon take her over to the Y. M. C. A. and introduce her to the head guy—and she’d get past, too.”
“I don’t know.... I don’t know Andree very well. She might not like it.”
“Rats!” Bert said, scornfully. “They might as well get acquainted one time as another.”
Kendall wasn’t so sure of that. He saw no reason why the girls should ever get acquainted. In short, he didn’t follow Bert’s reasoning nor comprehend the point he made.
“We can move in to-morrow,” Kendall said, and there was an end of it.
It was a long afternoon for Capt. Kendall Ware, but at last he found his day’s work at an end and himself in the street. He went into a café for a hurried meal and then took the Metro to the Place St.-Michel, arriving there a good half-hour ahead of the appointed time. He took a seat at a sidewalk table in a café from which he could watch the fountain, and ordered a glass of coffee into which he squirted saccharin from a bottle with a nozzle like those used by American barbers to put bay rum on one’s hair. At ten minutes past seven he was fearful Andree did not mean to keep her appointment. At a quarter past he was sure of it.... And she was not due until half past. He was to learn that she was one of those persons who are never ahead of time, who never hurry, but who may always be depended upon to arrive eventually.
It was almost exactly seven-thirty when he saw her coming across the Place. At first he did not recognize her, for he had been expecting that white suit topped by its cunning tam-o-’shanter; but she was not in white this evening. Her dress was of some light summer material and she wore a dark tam. He never saw her wear anything but a tam.... She looked more slender, younger, than before. Why, she seemed to be nothing but a child! He knew she saw him, but she did not seem to see him, for she came forward sedately, with those staid little steps of hers until she was almost at arm’s-length. Then she looked up and smiled.
Again he found that difficulty in opening the conversation, in organizing his French for action, and she—she seemed to have forgotten her English. But each was glad to see the other. He tried to tell her he was glad to see her, but made frightful work of his attempt to pronounce the word joyeux. It necessitated resort to the dictionary—and immediately awkwardness was dispelled.
“I have worked so—so—hard. All the day.”
“At what?”