"Well--pride, I suppose. We're good friends. I hope we are. I've never had a friend before. I think I should tell you everything, and I expect I feel hurt because you don't tell me. I'm sure you have a good reason for not letting my people know, but that hasn't prevented me from keeping you as my friend against all their wishes. They don't understand, I admit. But I believe I should. I'm sure I should."
Her hand in its white glove was resting on the door of the hansom in front of her. For a moment he looked at it, and then, with heart beating, in fear, joy, apprehension--a thousand emotions all flowing into one--he took it in his and pressed it reverently, then let it go.
"I know you would," he replied in his breath. And then he told her.
Did she remember Wrigglesworth's? Would she ever forget it? Those high-backed seats, the sawdust on the floor, the poll-parrot in its cage in the middle of the room! And, then, who could forget the name of Wrigglesworth?
Did she remember the little greengrocer's shop he had pointed out to her, and how she had said she would love one of the rosy-cheeked apples that were piled up in their little partitions--and his reply, rather reluctant, evidently none too eager that one of the rosy-cheeked apples should be hers? Yes, she remembered. She remembered, too, that nothing more had been said about the apples, and that he had not reminded her of them again when they came away from lunch.
Exactly--because over that very little greengrocer's shop in Fetter Lane--the two windows above the shop itself--was where he lived.
For a moment she gazed at him in astonishment; then she stared out into the traffic before her. Back through her mind raced the sensations she had experienced that day when she had lunched with him. The secrecy, the novelty, the stuffy little eating-house, it had all seemed very romantic then. The tablecloth was not as clean as it might be, but the high-backed seats had been there for nearly two hundred years. One thing weighed with another. The waiter was familiar; but, as John had explained to her, the waiters knew everybody, and you might feel as much annoyed at their familiarity as you had reason to at the age of the poll-parrot and the remarks that he made about the cooking. They all combined to make Wrigglesworth's--Wrigglesworth's; and she had taken it for granted in the halo of romance. But to live there! To sleep at night within sight and sound of all the things which her unaccustomed eyes and cars had seen and heard! She suddenly remembered the type of people she had seen coming in and out of the doorways; then she looked back at John.
"Then you're very poor?" she said gently.
"If you mean I haven't a lot of money," he said.
"Yes."