“Oh, I go shopping with her,” she said, “and I listen while she reads, and I get up little chafing-dish suppers, and answer the telephone, and check up her bank book, and talk to her publishers, and—oh, well—lots of things like that!”
“I shouldn’t call that a secretary,” said the young man. “At home we’d call you a sort of companion.”
Frances turned red, and began typing again. He was rude, and no mistake about it. Detestable! She worked violently for a time, then, out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of him, pecking away at his typewriter so slowly and stupidly that her heart smote her.
“Good night!” she said cheerfully when the gong sounded, and she went off to the dictation class and he to the beginner’s room, where she could see him through the open door, writing on the arm of his chair, surrounded by eager children.
III
Frances was a little late the next night, and from her locker in the corridor, she looked anxiously into the classroom for the young Englishman’s nice brown head bent over his machine. But he wasn’t there. She went to her place and began to work half-heartedly, with one eye on the door, watching for him. The clock ticked on and on, half an hour gone, still she couldn’t believe he wasn’t coming. The whole long hour passed, the typing lesson was finished, and he hadn’t come.
Disappointment out of all proportion assailed her. Her heart was like lead, the whole world blank.
“What a fool I am!” she told herself. “Why on earth should I care? I don’t really; it’s only that he’s the only other possible person in the place—— Why should he come? Of course he’s given up the whole thing in disgust. Of course he’s not coming back, at all. Ever. Of course I shan’t see him again. What difference does it make?”
And yet, in spite of all this excellent common-sense, that feeling of desolation persisted. She hated and loathed the silly school, made up her mind to stop coming. She sat in the shorthand class, scratching down her unintelligible little symbols——
Suddenly an awful thought swept over her. It grew rapidly to a conviction. He had certainly stayed away solely because of her, because she had been so preposterously over-friendly that he was disgusted and alarmed. She did wish that she might see him once more, just to tell him that she didn’t like him, not him, personally; simply, like all nice Americans, she had wanted to be kind to a stranger....