“Over the fence?” repeated Betty slowly. “Why, I didn’t know there was a fence.” She glanced out of the front window, interrogatively.
“Oh, not over there on the college side,” explained the young man impatiently. “Behind, between you and the stocking factory. I’m not a new college professor. I’m attached to the stocking factory.”
Nora brought in his tea just then, and he drank it very fast and quite in silence.
“I shall be in to-morrow,” he told Betty, as he paid his bill, “and I shall want the same things, except orange marmalade instead of the jam. Could you have it all ready for me at four? You see this break in the middle of the afternoon is—er—rather unauthorized, so I can’t be gone long.”
Betty promised and he hurried off, while Madeline and Mary, who had been listening and peeping surreptitiously from behind their curtain, rushed down to tease Betty and watch her visitor climb the fence. It was five feet high and of solid boards, but he vaulted it easily, and they watched him sprint up the snowy slope on the other side and disappear through a basement door into the great factory that crowned the hill.
“Who in the world can he be?” demanded Mary excitedly. “I didn’t suppose that kind of man worked in a factory. He might be the owner, but apparently he’s only just come upon the scene for the first time.”
“A new manager, probably, of a very superior brand,” Madeline suggested. “He certainly has some authority, because he talked about making changes. But he didn’t act a bit businesslike. We’ll just have to call him Young-Man-Over-the-Fence and await developments. Hist! Customers approach, and must not discover me in my work-apron.” And Madeline rushed headlong up the stairs, and slipped behind the curtain just in time to escape a merry party of freshmen seeking refreshment after a “regular terror” of a written lesson in Latin.
“I was going to have tea to-day myself,” Mary told Betty, “but I think I’ll wait till to-morrow—at four exactly. Young-Man-Over-the-Fence must learn not to expect a tête-à-tête thrown in with the tea.”
But the gentleman in question appeared not at all put out, when he arrived next day punctually on the stroke of four, to find a dainty little lady, who smiled demurely down into her teacup, in possession of his chosen table, and a white-capped maid ready to intercept his progress to Betty’s desk with the information that his tea would be served in one minute, at the table by the fire or in one of the stalls, just as he preferred.
He didn’t even glance in Betty’s direction as he slipped silently into a chair by the fire, looking tired and dejected somehow, and staring gloomily into a dusky corner straight ahead of him while he waited. But he had a sudden smile and a “thank you” for Nora when she hurried back with his tray, and he ate and drank with evident enjoyment.