"So-o?" conceded the girl without enthusiasm. Quite frankly she made it clear that the waitress approaching with the turkey was the only fact in the world that concerned her at that immediate moment. Yet as one who would conscientiously acknowledge on second thought that no honest bit of information was ever really to be scoffed at, she laid down her knife and fork presently and surveyed the Young Doctor with a slightly reviving interest. "Sam? Sam Kendrue?" she repeated painstakingly. "My name is Solvei Kjelland!" she announced with brisk matter-of-factness, and resumed her eating.
"Your name is—what?" puzzled the Young Doctor.
"Solvei Kjelland," she smiled ever so faintly. "S-o-l-v-e-i," she spelled out as one quite familiarly accustomed to such a task. "K-j-e-l-l-a-n-d. I am a Norwegian!" she 52 flared up suddenly with the ecstatic breathlessness of one who confides a really significant surprise.
"A Norwegian?" rallied the Young Doctor. For the first time, behind the quick shield of his hand, a little teasing smile began to twitch. "Really, you—you surprise me!" he recovered with an almost instantly forced gravity. "From your accent now, I had supposed all along that you were—er—Celtic!"
"Celtic?" queried the girl. Then with one shrewd glance at the Young Doctor's immobile face she burst out laughing. It was not a loud laugh. It was indeed a very little laugh, and most distinctly musical. But in that instant the whole attention of the room seemed to focus itself suddenly on that one helpless little table.
"Is there anything specially peculiar looking about us, I wonder?" bristled the Young Doctor. "Or rather, about me, I should say?" he corrected himself quickly. "Even that—that philanthropic woman," he fumed, "who vacated this table for us! Well, of course I wouldn't say exactly that she was climbing up on the rungs of her chair, but——" 53
"Oh, that's nothing," said the girl with unruffled nonchalance. "She's been staring at us all of the evening. Everybody's been staring at us all of the evening," she added amiably. Very daintily, but none the less expeditiously, as she spoke, she began to turn her attention to the crisp green salad at her plate. "It is because we are both so tall and fine," she confided without an atom of self-consciousness.
"Oh, well, really, speak for yourself!" flushed the Young Doctor.
"For myself?" she repeated a bit speculatively. Once again, in a moment of temporary arrestment, she laid down her knife and fork to scrutinize the Young Doctor's face. "Oh, no," she reassured him almost at once. "You are most tall and fine too! And so brune to my blonde!" she confided as she took up her fork again. "Certainly it is most striking of us," she mused at last more to the lettuce than to the Young Doctor. "But that poor womans over there?" she rallied transiently. "Everywhere one goes it is the same. 'Old—old maid' is it that you call her? So sad! So neglected! So 'romanticks' is it 54that you say? Everybodys she sees she thinks it is young lovers! But personally," said the girl, "I am still very hungry. Let us take what dessert is proffered."
"Oh, of course," acquiesced the Young Doctor. "If I've got to be—if we've got to be—stared at, I mean, it would certainly be quite as comfortable to have something to do."