“No; but somehow dollars look bigger downtown than they do uptown. Why, I know a little restaurant down there where a dollar looks as big as ten.”
“Don, dear, you’re living too much downtown,” she exclaimed somewhat petulantly. “You don’t realize it, but you are. It’s making you different––and I don’t want you different. I want you just as you used to be.”
She fell back upon a straight appeal––an appeal of eyes and arms and lips.
“I miss you awfully in the afternoons,” she 128 went on, “but I’ll admit that can’t be helped. I’ll give up that much of you. But after dinner I claim you. You’re mine after dinner, Don.”
She was very tender and beautiful in this mood. When he saw her like this, nothing else seemed to matter. There was no downtown or uptown; there was only she. There was nothing to do but stoop and kiss her eager lips. Which is exactly what he did.
For a moment she allowed it, and then with an excited laugh freed herself.
“Please to give me one of your cards, Don,” she said.
He handed her a card, and she wrote upon it this:––
“December sixteenth, Moore cotillion.”