“Not at all,” he answered. “Perhaps you would be good enough to bring a taxicab back, and I could take it on to my rooms. Take one from here, if you can find it. There are always some at the corner.”
“I’d love to,” she answered. “I must run upstairs and get my hat and coat.”
He watched her go up on tiptoe for fear of disturbing her brother. Her feet seemed almost unearthly in the lightness of their pressure. Not a board creaked. She seemed to float down to him in a most becoming little hat but a shockingly shabby jacket, of whose deficiencies she seemed wholly unaware. Her lips were parted once more in a smile.
“He is fast asleep and breathing quite regularly,” she announced. “It is nice of you to stay.”
He looked at her almost jealously.
“Do you know,” he said, “you ought not to go about alone?”
She laughed, softly but heartily.
“Have you any idea how old I am?”
“I took you for fourteen when I came inside,” he answered. “Afterwards I thought you might be sixteen. Later on, it seemed to me possible that you were eighteen. I am absolutely certain that you are not more than nineteen.”
“That shows how little you know about it. I am twenty, and I am quite used to going about alone. Will you sit upstairs or here? I am so sorry that I have nothing to offer you.”