“Three pairs!” ejaculated Tembarom. “He's got three pairs of socks! New? That's what's been the matter with him for the last week. Don't you mark them for him, Little Ann. 'Tain't good for a man to have everything.”
“Here they are,” said Jim, bringing them forward. “Twenty-five marked down to ten at Tracy's. Are they pretty good?”
Little Ann looked them over with the practised eye of a connoisseur of bargains.
“They'd be about a shilling in Manchester shops,” she decided, “and they might be put down to sixpence. They're good enough to take care of.”
She was not the young woman who is ready for prolonged lively conversation in halls and at bedroom doors, and she had turned away with the new socks in her hand when Tembarom, suddenly inspired, darted after her.
“Say, I've just thought of something,” he exclaimed eagerly. “It's something I want to ask you.”
“What is it?”
“It's about the society-page lay-out.” He hesitated. “I wonder if it'd be rushing you too much if—say,” he suddenly broke off, and standing with his hands in his pockets, looked down at her with anxious admiration, “I believe you just know about everything.”
“No, I don't, Mr. Tembarom; but I'm very glad about the page. Everybody's glad.”
One of the chief difficulties Tembarom found facing him when he talked to Little Ann was the difficulty of resisting an awful temptation to take hold of her—to clutch her to his healthy, tumultuous young breast and hold her there firmly. He was half ashamed of himself when he realized it, but he knew that his venial weakness was shared by Jim Bowles and Steinberger and probably others. She was so slim and light and soft, and the serious frankness of her eyes and the quaint air of being a sort of grown-up child of astonishing intelligence produced an effect it was necessary to combat with.