“Yes,” he sighed. “But it can’t be helped, and it doesn’t mean, you know, that they don’t go right on being loyal. We all have to make our way in the world. Lord, if it isn’t one thing it’s another! Money’s the main difficulty, and what can you hope to do if you never had any?”
Ah, what indeed? The impresario set down his cup thoughtfully; and a moment later she sympathetically brought out her own special phase of that curious irony they had spoken of at the auction. “No one would think, to see how ‘entrenched’ we look, that I’d be out of here, ‘bag and baggage,’ early in the morning!”
“What?” cried Mr. Curry, really quite shaken.
She nodded and smiled at him over a slice of caramel cake she was nibbling.
“Tomorrow!”
“It’s really heart-breaking,” she admitted slowly, “though when I’ve had time to grow a little interested in the new ‘apartment’ it won’t matter. But it did strike me as so irresistibly funny, sitting here with you ‘over the teacups,’ that at eight o’clock the men will be at the door for my trunks!”
Suddenly he leaned toward her with great earnestness. “Miss Utterbourne, I want to ask you a favour.”
“Yes?” Her brows were arched in cordial interrogation.
“It—it’s about this table—table we bought,” he said, quite steadily despite the brazen pronoun, and fixing her with his honest, eager gaze.