But he went no more. The banker had promised to send for him when he got a report on the plans from older architects. He did not send, and Billee was away in Boston with that restless old woman. What the devil did she want to be prancing around the country for at her age? Meaning the old woman, of course.
Hope began to shrivel. The office building grew smaller. It lost a story a day for thirty-five days. Nothing but the cellar, a hole in the ground, was left. He laid himself down in that and pulled the hole in.
And the green grass grew all around.
Then Billee came back with a rush, and things began to move. Fate had completed her gambit. She pushed a queen. The queen was Billee, of course.
A wonderful day was at hand, for King.
Chapter VII
THE wonderful day, the day for memory, was that on which King took Billee to Coney Island. June had arrived with white dresses, canvas shoes, Palm Beach suits, straw hats and sea yearnings. Billee had telephoned him from somewhere to meet her at Bowling Green at eleven. They would take cars to the Island and come back by boat at ten to Battery Park. Her old lady was off to New England again with the Plymouth Rockers, celebrating an anniversary, and would not return until next day. Her friend, the housemaid, would sit up for her, and the subway wasn’t far. And be sure and meet her or she would die of disappointment; she had never been to Coney Island.
She was wearing something white and simple, and came with a wonder light in her eyes, swinging a little bag gayly up to his face.
“Guess,” she cried, “my one extravagance!”
“Sandwich,” he ventured. Billee screamed: