Glory nodded. “I believe he’d like that.”
So once again she set out alone with her tall cousin on the top of a bus. For a few brief hours he was to be hers entirely. In anticipating the adventure, she had racked her brains to think of entertaining subjects to talk about. She was terribly afraid she would bore him; she believed him to be so extraordinarily clever. She needn’t have worried. He was a big boy on that winter’s afternoon and not a man. Directly they were out of sight of the Terrace, he took her arm.
“But Peter!” she protested, her face flushing.
“Don’t be a little silly,” he told her; “you’ll slip on the snow and fall down.——— I say, Glory, you do look ripping. How you have got yourself up! You’ve put on everything except the parlor sofa.”
At Topbury Corner he wanted to take a hansom, but she insisted on a bus. “No, really. I prefer it. I’ve a reason—yes. But I wouldn’t tell you what it is for worlds.”
Her reason was that she was afraid to be left alone with him lest she should grow self-conscious. It was easier to talk in crowds. And how they did talk! Her little prepared speeches, her scraps of nervously gathered information were all forgotten. They were two children sailing through a Christmas world on a schooner of the London streets. House-tops were white with snow; shops gay with decorations. In the murky grayness of the sky a derelict sun wallowed, like a ship on fire. It was a happy day; their eyes were bright to find something on every hand to laugh about. Now it was a cutler’s window, merry with mistletoe and holly, all a-gleam with gnashing knives and razors, across which was pasted the legend, “Remember the Loved Ones at Home.” Now it was an undertaker’s, in which stood a placard: