“You aren’t exactly taking the quickest way of putting me at my ease,” Nancy said. “I’m very much embarrassed, you know. I’d stand being looked over for a few minutes longer if I could,—but I can’t. I’m not having one of my most equable evenings.”
“I beg your pardon,” Collier Pratt said.
For the first time since she had seen his face with the light upon it, he smiled, and the smile relieved the rather empiric quality of his habitual expression. Nancy noticed the straight line of the heavy brows scarcely interrupted by the indication of the beginning of the nose, and wondering to herself if it were not possible 61 for a person with that eyebrow formation to escape the venality of disposition that is popularly supposed to be its adjunct,—decided affirmatively.
“I’m not used to talking to American girls very much. I forget how daintily they’re accustomed to being handled. I’m extremely anxious to put you at your ease,” he added quietly. “I appreciate the privilege of your company on what promised to be the dullest of dull evenings. I should appreciate still more,” he bowed, as he handed her a bill of fare of the journalistic proportions of the usual hotel menu, “if you would make a choice of refreshment, that we may dispense with the somewhat pathological presence of our young friend here,” he indicated the waiter afflicted with the jerking and titubation of a badly strung puppet. “I advise Rhine wine and seltzer. I offer you anything from green chartreuse to Scotch and soda. Personally I’m going to drink Perrier water.”
“I’d rather have an ice-cream,” Nancy said, “than anything else in the world,—coffee ice-cream, and a glass of water.”
“I wonder if you would, or if you only think it’s—safer. At any rate I’m going to put my 62 coat over your shoulders while you eat it. I never leave my rooms at this hour of the night without this cape. If I can find a place to sit out in I always do, and I’m naturally rather cold-blooded.”
“I’m not,” said Nancy, but she meekly allowed him to drape her in the folds of the light cape, and found it grateful to her.
“Bring the lady a big cup of coffee, and mind you have it hot,” Collier Pratt ordered peremptorily, as her ice-cream was served by the shaking waiter. “Coffee may be the worst thing in the world for you, nervously. I don’t know,—it isn’t for me, I rather thrive on it, but at any rate I’m going to save you from the combination of organdie and ice-cream on a night like this. What is your name?” he inquired abruptly.
“Ann Martin.”
“Not at my service?”