"It may be your hotel," said Dorothy, resuming the walk, "but I don't care to go there in a blouse and a skirt to be stared at."
"Who'll stare at you?"
"Not at me, at my clothes," she corrected.
"Then we'll go to the grill-room," he replied with inspiration.
"That might be——" She hesitated.
"You're not going home until you have something to eat," he announced with determination. "You look all used up," he added.
Dorothy submitted to the inevitable, conscious of a feeling of content at having someone to decide things for her. Suddenly she remembered Marjorie Rogers' remarks. What was she doing? If any of the girls saw her they would—— She had done the usual thing, sent a telegram to her mother to say she should be late, and was dining out with her chief on the first day—— Oh! it was horrible.
"Would you—would you?"—she turned to John Dene appealingly,—"would you mind if I went home," she faltered. "I'm not feeling—very well." She gulped out the last words conscious of the lie.
"Why sure," he said solicitously. "I'm sorry."
To her infinite relief he hailed a taxi.