"You are, I think."
"No more than he has earned from me. He's a very faithful worker, you know. I must look up some of his professional work. And I have an idea that concerns you, young lady. There's a new throat specialist I've just heard of. You're to call on him on Monday."
David walked home. When that absurd lump had been conquered he began to whistle determinedly, as became a young man who was no longer to make gloomy grandeur out of his failure. He kept it up until he reached the apartment and its chill loneliness smote him.
"Oh, Shirley," he cried, "if only you were—" And that was another saying he did not complete, because it might have been lacking in loyalty. . . .
A new tenant for the apartment had been found. The next Saturday David turned the key for the last time on a scene of defeat. He was not sorry to leave. That night he took a train for an over-Sunday visit with Shirley. She had been urging him to come.
"I know it's an extravagance," she wrote. "All the nice things are. But Davy Junior and I are so homesick for you." David's heart cut no capers at that, even before he read what followed. "I'm afraid people will think it queer, your not coming, and of course, I can't tell them it's because we are poor."
It was an unsuccessful trip from the beginning, though Shirley, all smiles and exclamations, met him at the station and hugged him so hard that she wrinkled his collar. She took him to Aunt Clara's in that lady's new car, saying, "Home, Charles," as if she had been born to automobiles and chauffeurs. There the day was taken up by many guests—including the resplendent Sam Hardy, in cutaway and silk waistcoat, New York made, that made David feel shabbier than he looked—come to inspect Shirley's husband. The only real "aside" he had was with Aunt Clara, who quizzed him concerning the state of his debts.
"You are doing quite well," she was pleased to approve. "I begin to believe there's something in you, after all."
"Thank you," David murmured, as politely as the case allowed.
"Now don't get huffy with me, young man," she said. "That's saying a great deal, from me to you. You can't expect me to fall on your neck."