“To see you back again?”
“To see me come back with money in my purse—and more of it to follow. They’d think the world was coming to an end. But, on second thought, I guess it wouldn’t do. I shouldn’t care to give any of them heart failure.”
“But if you don’t go home?” Philip queried.
“In that event your bachelor apartment idea has an irresistible appeal. Unless you particularly long for complete solitude, I’d be glad to join you. Say a couple of bed-rooms, a bath and perhaps a common sitting-room?”
“Done,” said Philip shortly. “What next?”
“For me?—oh, confound your picture! You are bound and determined to make me think more than one day ahead, in spite of everything, aren’t you? All right, if I must. After we are settled, perhaps I shall look around and try to find some safe investment niches into which I can dribble my share of the golden showers from the ‘Little Jean’ as they come in.”
“Good. That is the most sensible thing I’ve heard you say in a week of Sundays!” said the one in whom the reaction to the New England normalities had by this time wrought its perfect work.
“And the least expected, you would add—if you were not too soft-hearted. That, too, is all right; I wasn’t expecting it myself. Nothing has ever been farther from my promptings heretofore, I can solemnly assure you.”
Philip became banal. “It is never too late to mend. I’ve been hoping——”
“You mustn’t hope too violently, Philip mine. I am a creature of impulse, and just now the spirit moves me to become a money grubber; to hang on to what I have, and to plant it and watch it grow like Jack’s beanstalk. Past that, the same spirit is moving me to get acquainted with some really good people; if there be any such in this infatuated town.”