“Oh, my, what a dusty towel!” she was thinking, in distress. “And no curtains. The woman that runs this house ought to be ashamed of herself!”
She turned to Ritchie without the least trace of haughtiness.
“Well, good night, Everard,” she said.
It was the first time she had used his name. He needed that assuagement to compensate for the lingering glance she gave to the prostrate unknown.
IV
Ritchie came home in a somewhat bitter humor, partly due to his having spent the night on a hard chair, and partly to other and finer causes. He hoped that drunken fellow would be gone. He wished never to see him again; but when Ritchie opened the door, there he was, lying on the bed and reading one of the little books.
“Hello!” he said, as joyously as if Ritchie were his heart’s dearest friend.
“Are you feeling better?” Ritchie curtly inquired.
Without waiting for a reply, he began to take off his grimy work clothes.
“I don’t know how to thank you,” the other went on. “Absolutely the whitest thing I ever heard of! I must have been pretty far gone last night—can’t remember a blamed thing.”