Miss Waters looked a trifle disappointed.
“Well, then,” she said. “Go ahead working until your time’s up, and then I’ll walk up to the Library with you.”
Aghast, horrified, Rosaleen pretended to draw, thinking desperately of some means of getting rid of Miss Waters. While all the time she could hear Miss Waters getting ready, scrabbling about in her bedroom, dropping things, and hunting for other things in bureau drawers. Presently she came out, and in spite of the mild October day, she was wearing her dreadful old sealskin coat with the high, puffed shoulders that made her look so huddled, and perched high on her cottony hair, the small fur hat that always blew off. It was always an infliction for Rosaleen to walk with this poor old scarecrow, and on this day it was nothing short of torture.
Sedately, arm in arm, they walked along Tenth Street and turned up Fifth Avenue, Miss Waters leaning heavily upon Rosaleen and chattering with youthful exuberance, roguishly aware of the glances that followed her. And her hat did blow off, and bowled along ahead of them, like a dusty, terrified little animal, until a man stopped it with his foot and with disdain and in silence returned it to the dishevelled artist. She thanked him, giggling, gathering her cottony hair in both hands to stuff it back under the hat.
“I thought I had a pin in it,” she explained.
After this, she looked wilder than ever, and the rough October wind swirling about her skirts revealed a hole in each of her stockings. And presently she gave a dismayed shriek, and clutched her sealskin coat about her.
“Oh!” she cried. “The button’s just come off!”
“What button?” asked Rosaleen.
“The button on my coat. Have you a pin, my dear?”
“I’m sorry, but I haven’t. Does it matter much?”