"Yes, sirree!—Can't come in at the eleventh hour and take our credit away! Can he, Miss Wing?—ha, ha! All over but the applause!"
However, Mr. Geddie did not know himself for a tactful man for nothing. Observing that Miss Wing continued to drop magazines on the floor in silence, and that her young man there didn't seem to know what to do with himself, he gracefully adopted a new position. From the third round of the ladder, he made a roguish address, the meat of which was that there was a whole corner left of the bottom shelf, and if Mr. Garrott insisted, etc.
"I'll relieve you with pleasure," said Charles, coldly.
So Mr. Geddie lumbered down from the ladder, wiped his hands on his pocket-handkerchief and re-attached his cuffs. He implored Miss Wing to make herself absolutely at home in his office, assured her, not once but three times, that John the porter, on the floor below, would be positively gratified to do any service for her, however small. In the moment of parting, he volunteered a new civility.
"Why, here, Mr. Garrott!" he hastily exclaimed, "your coat's all dusty in the back! That won't do! Just a minute while I get my whisk—"
But Miss Wing's young man interrupted him rudely.
"No, I'm not dusty at all! Thanks—don't trouble."
Another person who didn't know the value of a smile, clearly. And the man was dusty, of course. Well, no affair of his, of course. Mr. Geddie kept a-smiling.
"Well, good people!" said he. "Olive oil!"
When he had got a polite distance down the hall, Miss Wing's young man shut the office door upon him. So at last came privacy. For the first time, since the unforgotten afternoon last month, Charles Garrott stood alone with his admirable heroine.