“For my motor? No,” Millner jested in his frank free voice. “The fact is, I was just standing here lost in the contemplation of my luck”—and as his companion’s pale blue eyes seemed to shape a question, “my extraordinary luck,” he explained, “in having been engaged as your father’s secretary.”
“Oh,” the other rejoined, with a faint colour in his sallow cheek. “I’m so glad,” he murmured: “but I was sure—” He stopped, and the two looked kindly at each other.
Millner averted his gaze first, almost fearful of its betraying the added sense of his own strength and dexterity which he drew from the contrast of the other’s frailness.
“Sure? How could any one be sure? I don’t believe in it yet!” he laughed out in the irony of his triumph.
The boy’s words did not sound like a mere civility—Millner felt in them an homage to his power.
“Oh, yes: I was sure,” young Draper repeated. “Sure as soon as I saw you, I mean.”
Millner tingled again with this tribute to his physical straightness and bloom. Yes, he looked his part, hang it—he looked it!
But his companion still lingered, a shy sociability in his eye.
“If you’re walking, then, can I go along a little way?” And he nodded southward down the shabby gaudy avenue.
That, again, was part of the high comedy of the hour—that Millner should descend the Spence steps at young Spence’s side, and stroll down Fifth Avenue with him at the proudest moment of the afternoon; O. G. Spence’s secretary walking abroad with O. G. Spence’s heir! He had the scientific detachment to pull out his watch and furtively note the hour. Yes—it was exactly forty minutes since he had rung the Spence door-bell and handed his card to a gelid footman, who, openly sceptical of his claim to be received, had left him unceremoniously planted on the cold tessellations of the vestibule.