“Well?” said the girl with the Roman nose.
“I set my watch by the hall clock in order to be sure of getting up in time; then I lay awake nearly all night so I would not oversleep myself. When I reached the station it was five minutes past six.”
“Watch stopped?” asked the girl with the eyeglasses.
“No; Harry had run down to spend that evening with Kate, and she had set the clock back. The man was married in October to one of the girls who had risen in time to see him off.”
“Of course,” said the president. “Speaking of awful things—you all know how afraid I am of fire.”
“We do,” said the girl with the Roman nose. “I believe you could smell a burning match a block away.”
“Well, the other day our fire insurance ran out, and Tom handed me the money and asked me to go down and renew it, as he was very busy. I forgot all about it until night; then I lay awake sniffing smoke until Tom thought I had influenza again. Next morning I got ready to go and attend to it at once. I wanted to look nice, too, because one of the men in that office once told Tom that he had an awfully pretty wife.”
“How much money did he borrow from Tom that time?” asked the girl with the dimple in her chin.
“I was curling my hair,” went on the president, unheeding, “when I smelled fire. I ran wildly all through the house, with a curl still wrapped about the iron, trying to locate it!”
“And did you find any?” asked the brown-eyed blonde.