“I wouldn’t mind it at all,” Collier Pratt said. “I think it would be a delightful arrangement,—if I’m to take you seriously.”
“Nancy is always to be taken seriously,” Betty put in. “What she really wants of the child is to use her for dietetic experiment, I’m sure.”
“That’s what she’s used to, poor child,” Collier Pratt said ruefully.
The removal of Gaspard created a diversion. Nancy took Sheila in to bid him good-by, and the great creature was so touched by the farewell kiss that she imprinted on his forehead, and the revelation of the fact that a fellow being had been suffering kindred throes in the chamber just beyond his own that he was of two minds about letting himself be moved at all from her proximity. A group of waitresses collected on the second landing, and Nancy and her friends stood together at the head of the stairs while the white-coated intern from the hospital rolled his great bulk upon a fragile-looking stretcher, and with the assistance of all the male talent in the establishment, managed 146 to head him down the stairs, and so on across the court and into the waiting ambulance.
Nancy’s eyes filled with inexplicable tears, and she caught Collier Pratt regarding them with some amusement.
“He’s such a dear,” she said somewhat irrelevantly. “I really didn’t care whether he was sick or not this morning,—but you get so fond of people that are around all the time.”
“I don’t,” said Collier Pratt,—he spoke very lightly, but there was something in his tone that made Nancy want to turn and look at him intently. She seemed to see for the first time a shade of defiant cruelty in his face,—“I don’t,” he reiterated.
“I do,” Nancy repeated stubbornly, but as she met his slow smile, the slight impression of unpleasantness vanished.
“We artists are selfish people,” he said. “I’m going to run away now, and leave my daughter to cultivate your charming friends. Will you come and eat your dinner at my little table to-night, and talk, discuss this matter of her visit to you?”
“I will if there is any dinner,” Nancy said, putting out a throbbing hand to him.