"Oh, about two weeks, I believe, but—"
"Two weeks!"
"Wensons want the flat around the 20th, I understand. We didn't speak of that just now—Mary'll tell you about it. Let's see," said Donald, fidgeting about and looking first out one window, then another. "Going to your mother's to-morrow, I suppose? Drop in this afternoon, Charlie—or to-night. And that's so!—you can take around a package for me, things I bought for Mary in New York—oh, neck-fichus, silk stockings—that sort of stuff."
But the thought of himself as Mary's cheerer-up at this juncture in her Career was bitterly ironic to Charles, and, answering curtly that he would be too busy to run errands this afternoon, he changed the subject at once. In short, when did Donald go to Wyoming? Unable to resist the opening, Donald said that he would probably start on March 15th; and so began to talk fitfully of himself. At the other window, Charles relapsed into thought. He did not speak again until the car rolled up to the entrance of the showy apartment-hotel where Donald lived. Then, rousing himself abruptly, he said, with a well-done air of negligent sprightliness:—
"Oh, by the by, Donald—heard anything from our little friend in the four-wheeler, as you call it? I haven't laid eyes on her since that day you and I marched up like little soldiers to give back her books. Funny, that was!—ha, ha!"
Donald's face of a young man about to be married changed perceptibly. He answered, quite stiffly:—
"I fail to see anything funny in it. Miss Flower's perfectly well, I believe."
"Good!—glad to hear it. She needs her health, all the driving about she does.... Why, where'd she see you to-day?"
"I didn't say I'd seen her to-day, that I remember. By Jove, I don't get a minute to see anybody or anything, rushed about this way all the time!... Well! Obliged for the lift."
"And how do you know she's well, then?"