She glanced about her. “I shall always remember this dear little stuffy old room. I almost hate to leave it at all. I want to fix in my mind just how it looks.”
“Oh, we’ll come often again,” he remarked, lightly. Then it occurred to him that this assurance contained perhaps an element of rashness. “Have you got anything special to do to-day?” he asked, with awkward abruptness.
The question puzzled and troubled her. “I was going to celebrate my birthday,” she murmured, with a wistful, flickering smile ready to fade into depression.
“Of course you are; that’s all settled,” he responded, making up by the heartiness of his tone for the forgetful stupidity of his query. “What I meant was—what were you thinking of doing before—before you knew you had a birthday on hand?”
Vestalia examined the bottom of her coffee-cup, and poked at it with the spoon. “Me? Oh, I had several things to do,” she made reply, hesitatingly. “I had to find something to eat, and contrive how to earn some money, and hunt up a new lodging, and see how I was going to feed myself to-morrow, and—and other small matters of that sort.”
His comment was prefaced with a kind, sad little laugh.
“You must go to the old place, and get your things,” he said. “How much do you owe?”
“I’d rather not go back at all.” She ventured to look up at him now. “I don’t want ever to lay eyes on that old hag again.”
“But your things. If I sent a commissionaire, would she give them up?—on payment of the bill, of course.”
“They’re not worth a bus-fare—they’re really not. You see,” she went on with her reluctant confidences, “I had to pawn everything. These clothes I have on are every rag I have left.”