Miss Weldon was charmed with the dainty apartment, and loved the cunning electric fixtures in the tiny dining-room. She tucked an apron under her belt, and appointed Nolan her assistant in making toast, while Eveley finished the light details of serving dinner.
“It certainly is a silly business all the way around,” Eveley decided.
After their coffee, and after Nolan had finished his second cigar, Miss Weldon said, “Now since Miss Ainsworth got dinner, we must do the dishes. I shall wash, and you must dry them, Mr. Inglish, and be sure you make them shine, for I am very fussy about my dishes.”
And Eveley had to sit down in a big chair and rest, though she did not feel like sitting down and hated resting—and look quietly on while Miss Weldon fished each separate dish from the hot suds and held it out playfully for Nolan to wipe. It made a long and laborious task of the dish washing for Eveley, and she was quite worn out at its conclusion.
“Funny that some people can’t do their plain duty without getting the whole neighborhood mixed up in it,” she thought resentfully.
At nine o’clock, came Timothy Baldwin. Miss Weldon met him at the window, looked at him, half curiously, half fearfully, and after lifting her lips for a fleeting kiss, backed quickly away from him into a remote corner.
Then Nolan, according to prearranged plan, suggested that he and Eveley run down and put the car in the garage. “And if there is a moon, we may go for a joy-ride, so don’t expect us back too soon.”
And as they rode he spoke so unconcernedly of Sally’s smiles and curls and pretty hands, that Eveley was restored to her original enthusiasm for the campaign.
“Won’t she be wild?” she chuckled, snuggling close against Nolan’s side, but never forgetting that she was mistress of the wheel. “Tim is going to talk business all the time, and at ten-thirty he is going to say he must hurry home to rest up for a hard day’s work to-morrow. We are not to get in until eleven, so she will be utterly bored to distraction. Isn’t it fun?”
They drove slowly, happily around the park, over the bridge and under the bridge, around the eucalyptus knoll above the lights on the bay, and then went down-town for ice-cream. At exactly eleven o’clock, Nolan took her hands as she stood on the bottom step of the rustic stair.