“Get out of the shop, I mean. You didn’t know I could be right industrious and useful, did you? I’m trimming hats here in Madame Marchande’s.”
Once more Philip struggled with inborn constraint and made himself say: “You said the family wouldn’t be expecting you this early. I haven’t been to dinner—I was just on my way. Won’t you go along and have a bite with me?”
She hesitated, but only for a moment.
“I don’t know why I shouldn’t, if you want me to.” Then, as he drew her arm under his own and steered her toward the Larimer Street corner; “You got the note I wrote you last spring?”
“Not until just the other day, when I came back from my year in the mountains. When I went away last spring I didn’t leave any forwarding address; I couldn’t, very well, because I hadn’t the remotest idea where I was going to be from week to week. So my mail was held here in the railroad office. Since I read your note, I’ve been trying to find out what had become of you and your mother and the girls, but I couldn’t get even a starting point. You have been in Denver all the time?”
“Yes; there was nothing to do but to stay here.” Then, as they turned west on Larimer: “Where are you taking me?”
“I thought we would go around to Charpiot’s—unless you would rather make it the Windsor or the St. James.”
“Oh, but you mustn’t do anything like that!” she protested quickly. “They are all three too horribly expensive.”
He smiled under cover of the darkness, saying: “I guess we can stand the expense, for once in a way. We will go to Charpiot’s. Bero always has good cooks; imports them from New Orleans, so they say.” Then, in a gratulatory outburst as foreign to his later moods—and to the New England traditions—as was his praise of French cooks: “You can’t imagine what a comfort it is to be with you again. I was beginning to be afraid I had lost you for good and all.”
She acknowledged the outburst with a friendly little pressure of his arm.