“How I used to make your artistic eye water!” said Katherine laughingly. “It’s a wonder you stood me as well as you did.”
“It was not I who had to ‘stand’ you, but you who had to ‘stand’ me,” said Veronica seriously. “In spite of your loose ends you were—what do you call it? ‘all wool and a yard wide,’ but I was the original prune.” Veronica, while a perfect master of literary English, still faltered deliciously over slang phrases.
Katherine, as usual, steered away from the subject of Veronica’s former attitude toward her. When a thing was over and done with, Katherine argued, there was no use of dragging it out into the light again.
“You haven’t told me yet how you happen to be here in this tea-room this afternoon,” she said, by way of changing the subject, “when you told us, over your own signature, that you would have to stay in New York all this week. What do you mean,” she finished with mock gravity, “by deceiving us so?”
“I have to play at a concert here in town to-night,” explained Veronica. “It will be necessary for me to be back at the Conservatory to-morrow, and am returning by a late train to-night. I didn’t know about it when I wrote to Nyoda, or I should have insisted on her coming in for the concert and bringing all the girls along. It’s an emergency case; I’m just filling in on the program in place of a ’cello soloist who was taken suddenly ill with influenza. The concert managers sent a hurry call to Martini last night, asking him to send over the first student who happened to be handy, and as I happened to be taking a lesson from Martini at the time, I was the lucky one. I just came over this afternoon.”
Veronica modestly suppressed the fact that it had been the great Martini himself who had been urgently requested to play at the concert, but having a previous engagement, had chosen her, out of the whole Conservatory, to play in his stead.
“My aunt is here with me,” continued Veronica. “She’s over at that table in the far corner behind that palm. I suppose she is wondering what has become of me by this time. When I saw you over here I just jumped up and ran off without a word of explanation. She’s probably eaten up my nut rolls by this time, too; they were just being served when I rushed away. Come on over and see her.”
Katherine followed Veronica through the crowded room to the far corner, where, at a little table beneath a softly shaded wall lamp Veronica’s aunt, Mrs. Lehar, sat placidly sipping tea and eating cakes. She did not recognize Katherine at first, never having seen her otherwise than with clothes awry and hair tumbling down over her eyes, and Katherine was secretly amused at the gentle lady’s look of astonishment upon being told who it was.
“She did eat my rolls, after all,” said Veronica to Katherine. “I knew she would. But I’m glad she did; I am in far too exalted a mood for nut rolls now. Nothing but nectar and ambrosia will do to celebrate our meeting. Look and see if there’s any nectar and ambrosia on your menu card, will you, Katherine dear? There doesn’t seem to be any on mine.”
“None here, either,” reported Katherine, after gravely reading her card through.