"Because she told me so over the telephone, if you give a darn! What's this about, anyway?"
"Why, not a thing! Why, my dear fellow! Of course, I understand perfectly! You don't suppose I suspect you of being old Tilletts's rival, do you? Not likely—ha, ha! No, I think it's awfully nice of you, old fellow, knowing as I do that you don't admire her particularly. That's what I wanted to say," proceeded Charles, laying his hand affectionately and detainingly on Donald's arm. "Of course you know she doesn't have much of a time—attention and all that—oh, I see through you perfectly! It's just Talbott and the Oldmixon girls over again—"
"Oh, she told me about you!" said Donald in a blustering manner; and, snatching his arm away, he sprang out upon the sidewalk.
His remark evoked curiosity; but Charles's overweening interest was not in Angela now. And he was thinking intently: "He's not engaged to Helen Carson yet, by a long shot. He's not even at the station—that's a mile—on Washington Street. I'd better keep an eye on you, my buck ..."
Aloud he said: "She did?—nothing good, I fear. Here!—wait a minute! That package for Miss Mary, Donald—I expect you'd better leave it for me to take, after all. I'll find some way to get it around to her—"
"All right—"
"You bring it by as you start for the station, that's the best way. Then we'll drive down together," said Charles, fixing his friend with a compelling gaze. "I've—ah—got some things I want to talk to you about."
"I'll bring it by," said Donald, non-committally, and rushed away.
He went up seven floors, telephoned for the "staff valet," and proceeded to business. There was a period of the wildest activity. At the end of it, the hour being then too late for hope that any expressman would make the train with the trunk, Donald engaged the valet to secure a carriage, take down and check the baggage, get him a ticket and a seat, and be waiting for him with these things at a given point. In such slapdash, inefficient fashion this young man conducted all his personal life.
"And mind you see the baggage on the train," he warned the fellow. "This is an important trip."