“Are you going abroad too?” she asked in surprise.
He nodded.
“I’m going to Paris and Monte Carlo—especially to Monte Carlo,” he said, “and afterwards I may run across to Algeria or to Egypt.”
She looked at him with a new respect. She was less impressed by the great possessions which his plans betrayed than by his confident independence, and dimly she wondered why he was working at a drug-store for low wages and wondered, too, whether he was——
“What are you blushing about?” asked Timothy curiously.
“I wasn’t blushing,” she protested; “I was just wondering whether I could ever afford a trip like that.”
“Of course you can,” said the young man scornfully. “If I can afford it, you can, can’t you? If I go abroad and stay at the best hotels, and go joy rides in the Alps and plan all this when I haven’t got fifteen shillings over my rent——”
“You haven’t fifteen shillings over your rent!” she repeated, aghast. “But how can you go abroad without money?”
Timothy was genuinely astounded that she could ask so absurd a question.
“Why, I’d take a chance on that,” he said. “A little thing like money doesn’t really count.”