Out in the hall Pete Stearns was leaning against the wall.
"I'll be damned!" he whispered. "The lucky stiff."
Beyond the door Bill was facing Nemesis. She looked neither perilous nor forbidding; she was just a girl with a lot of nice points, so far as he could see. The encounter with Pete had braced him; perhaps it had even elevated him somewhat in her eyes. He felt the need of elevation; Aunt Caroline had managed to give him a sense of pampered unmanliness. Evidently the girl was waiting for him to begin.
"I guess you didn't tell Aunt Caroline how I booted you across the room last night," said Bill.
"No," she answered.
"That's good."
And he felt that it was good. This mutual reticence, so far as Aunt Caroline was concerned, tentatively served as a bond. He waved her gallantly to a chair, and she sat first on the edge of it; then, remembering that a social secretary should be a person of ease, she settled back.
"What has my aunt been telling you about me?" he demanded suddenly.
"Why—er—nothing. That is, she told me you wanted a social secretary."
"She did, eh? She said I wanted one?"