"Of course not. When did it happen?"
Delafield kept his face persistently from Anne's. For the world he could not have looked at her.
"It was last week." West was smiling eagerly at him, ignoring the woman's presence.
"I went into the grocer's to do an errand for Mr. Swazey, and she was behind the little grating—you pay her. She is the cashier. I didn't take my change, and she had to call me back, and we dropped it all over the floor. She helped me pick it up. Oh, if you could see her, Mr. Delafield!"
"Is she handsome?"
"She is a perfectly beautiful woman," said the boy.
"Dear, dear!" murmured the older man.
"We are engaged, but her mother objects to me. In fact—in fact, her mother doesn't know that she is engaged. She has been engaged before. But she never really loved the man. Her mother doesn't care for poetry——"
At that word, Delafield, with a distinct effort, connected this babbling druggist's clerk with his poet of "The Clearing Shower." There could be no doubt that they were the same person. As in a dream he listened to the boy.
"And that's what I dropped in to see about. I told her mother all you said about me being sure to be well-off some day, and about the book being published soon, and her brother, that's Pippa's uncle——"