She placed the flowers on the table when she had her supper. All night long they filled the room with their fragrance.
CHAPTER VIII
A MAN OF AFFAIRS
When, with some eighteen dollars in his pocket, Don on Sunday ordered Nora to prepare for him on that day and during the following week a breakfast of toast, eggs, and coffee, he felt very much a man of affairs. He was paying for his own sustenance, and with the first money he had ever earned. He drew from his pocket a ten-dollar bill, a five-dollar bill, a two-dollar bill, and some loose change.
“Pick out what you need,” he ordered, as he held the money toward her.
“I don’t know how much it will be, sir. I’ll ask the cook, sir.”
“Very well; ask the cook. About dinners––I think I’d better wait until I see how I’m coming out. Dinners don’t matter so much, any way, because they come after I’m through work.”
Don ate his breakfast in the dining-room before the open fire, as his father used to do. 81 In smoking-jacket and slippered feet, he enjoyed this as a rare luxury––even this matter of breakfasting at home, which until now had been merely a negative detail of routine.