The girl laughed aloud, with pathetic irony at some conceit which curled her lip in scornful amusement. “Words rose to her tongue, but she forbore to utter them, and stared up the street.
“You’ll come along, won’t you?” He had held up his hand, and a four-wheeler, with a driver and horse of advanced years and dejected aspect, was crawling diagonally across the roadway toward them.
She took courage to look him frankly in the face. “I shall be very much obliged to you, indeed,” she said, keeping her voice up till the avowal should be finished. “I’ve had no breakfast.”
The ancient cab, with a prodigious rattling of framework and windows for its snail’s progress, bore them along past Trafalgar Square, and westward through narrow streets, already teeming with a busy, foreign-looking life, till it halted before a restaurant in one of the broader thoroughfares of Soho.
When they had alighted, and the sad old driver, pocketing his shilling in scowling silence, had started off, a thought occurred to Mosscrop.
“I tell you what we’ll do,” he broke forth. “Well decree that it’s your birthday, too, so that we can celebrate them together. That will be much more fun. And before we go into breakfast, I must get you a little present of some sort, just to mark the occasion. Come, you haven’t anything to say about it at all. It’s my affair, entirely.”
He led the way along past several shops, and halted in front of a narrow window in which a small collection of women’s boots was displayed. A man in shirt-sleeves and apron had just taken down the shutter, and stood now in the doorway, regarding them with a mercantile yet kindly smile.
“It is the best Parisian of make,” the shoeman affirmed, to help forward Mosscrop’s decision.
“You can see how different they are from ordinary English things,” said David, argumentatively. “The leather is like a glove, and the workmanship—observe that! I don’t believe any lady could have a more unique present than a pair of real French boots.”
The girl had come up, and stood close beside him, almost nestling against his shoulder. He saw in the glass the dim reflection of her pleased face, and moved toward the door as if it were all settled. Then, as he stepped on the threshold, she called to him.