Dick joined her immediately. “Who’s the old friend?” he asked, looking after the prettily dressed girl who was now mingling with the rest of the hurrying noon crowds on the sidewalk.
“I’m sure I don’t know, Dick, some one that thought she knew me. She stood right in front of me and never stopped to wonder if I were the right one. I must look a good deal like some one she knows.”
Then Shirley repeated the girl’s speech. “She asked me if I were seeing how the hoi polloi do it; so the girl I look like can’t be in the habit of frequenting cafeterias. And this one is a nice one, too.”
“Well, just look out that some one doesn’t try to scrape an acquaintance with you on the strength of your resemblance to somebody.”
“I don’t see how that could be done, Dick.”
The next episode, however, was very harmless and occurred the next day. Shirley was alone, stepping out of a candy shop not far from where they were staying. A handsome car drew up to the curb and permitted a lad of possibly twelve years to hop out, then drove rapidly away. The boy was well dressed, his knickers, stockings, shoes,—the whole outfit, in the latest style for boys. He started to run across the pavement toward one of the doors in the tall building, when he caught sight of Shirley.
“Oh, that’s funny,” he said. “I thought that you were out seeing the Indians by this time. Mother said,—” but here the child broke off, for some one called him from the door. “Goodbye,” he called back, as he started on after his brief halt, with a touch of his cap.
“A sweet little gentleman,” thought Shirley, who had enjoyed the friendly little speech and looked with pleasant acknowledgment at the lad when he spoke to her.
“Whoever my double is, Dick,” said Shirley, after she returned to the hotel and found Dick in the lobby, “she is due out where the Indians are, I’ve just discovered. I hope that I run across her. No, I don’t either. I’d rather there were just one of me!”
“I don’t blame you, Shirley. But you will probably never see her, especially if she has gone on West ahead of us. Besides we may not be going to the same places at all.”