"But he is a care," said he. "He is always losing his heart, Miss Guile."
"And picking up some one else's, I fancy," said she.
"By the way, who was the good-looking chap that came to Cherbourg to meet you?"
"A very old friend, Mr. Schmidt. I've known him since I was that high." (That high was on a line with her knee.)
"Attractive fellow," was his comment.
"Do you think so?" she inquired innocently, and he thought she over-played it a little. He was conscious of an odd sense of disappointment in her. "Have you never been out to St. Cloud? No? I never go there without feeling a terrible pity for those poor prodigals who stood beside its funeral pyre and saw their folly stripped down to the starkest of skeletons while they waited. The day of glory is short, Mr. Schmidt, and the night that follows is bitterly long. They say possession is nine points of the law, but what do nine points mean to the lawless? The rich man of to-day may be the beggar of to-morrow, and the rich man's sons and daughters may be serving the beggars of yesterday. I have been told that in the lower east side of New York City there are men and women who were once princes and princesses, counts and countesses, dukes and duchesses. Why doesn't some one write a novel about the royalty that hides its beggary in the slums of that great city?"
"What's this? Epigrams and philosophy, Miss Guile?" he exclaimed wonderingly. "You amaze me. What are you trying to convey? That some day you may be serving yesterday's beggar?"
"Who knows!" she said cryptically. "I am not a philosopher, and I'm sorry about the epigrams. I loathe people who make use of them. They are a cheap substitution for wisdom. Do you take sugar in your tea?" It was her way of abandoning the topic, but he looked his perplexity. "I thought I'd ask now, just for the sake of testing my memory later on." She was laughing.
"Two lumps and cream," he said. "Won't you be good enough to take off that veil? It seriously obstructs the view."
She complacently shook her head. "It doesn't obstruct mine," she said. "Have you been reading what the papers are saying about your friend Mr. Blithers and his obstreperous Maud?"