“She is, of course. But what I did not tell you is this. Three years ago while Dody was in France, father must have sort of lost his mind or something, for without a minute’s warning, he up and married somebody—a woman, of course. When Dody got home from the war she was not there, and when he asked about her, father just sort of laughed and looked sheepish, and said, ‘Oh, she’s gone on a visit.’ ‘Where to?’ Dody asked. ‘Oh, somewhere around,’ said father. ‘Is she coming back?’ asked Dody. ‘Holy Mackinaw, I hope not,’ said father, and that is the last we ever heard of her. But of course he is still married.”
It was a hard blow, but Eveley rallied at last, though slowly. “Don’t worry,” she said monotonously. “There is another adjustment. Just keep happy—and give me time.”
CHAPTER VIII
SHE MEETS A DEMONSTRATOR
“You’ve simply got to sneak off on some pretext or another, and meet me at the Doric agency at three o’clock for a demonstration. They say it is perfectly wonderful—why, it hardly takes a look of gas to go a thousand miles, and its tires are literally cast iron.”
This was her summons by telephone. And Nolan, determined not to desert trusting little Eveley to the tender mercies of motor sharks, went to the Middle Member, whose position he confidently expected one day to possess, and announced that important business of a personal nature required his presence that afternoon. And because Nolan never abused privileges—or if he did was never detected in the act—and because his firm was composed of human beings and not the granite machines common to fiction, Nolan encountered no difficulty.
And Eveley went to her own employer, and smiling seductively upon him, said vaguely that some awfully important and unexpected things had come up, and could she please get off at three, if she would work particularly hard in the meantime to make up?
And because Eveley was very pretty, and withal very businesslike, and pleasant about trifles like working after hours and special grinds and such things, and because her employer was acutely conscious of her soft voice and bright eyes, he smiled in return and said: