"But you do. Well, mamma saw me retrieving the family fortune in some romantic and bohemian manner. I was to create something, a book, or be a decorator for the smart, a reader of East Indian poems. She had splendid ideas, but the fact is, I've found, you have to have a hint of something inside to do anything successfully outside. I hadn't it.
"I descended to a social secretary and chaperoning that horrid woman's nasty little white pups, and from that mamma has consented to my marrying Dicky. He only has ten thousand a year, and I'm going to marry him on that! I love him terribly! Isn't it splendidly romantic?"
"Um," grunted Stuyvesant. "Annette," he said, "I want you to let me provide for your mother. You will? ... No, don't thank me. It irritates me. Oh, please!" After his last plea she stopped her effusive thanks and pressed his arm. Suddenly she laughed.
"What are you laughing at?" asked Stuyvesant.
"Cecilia advocated pink for the poor," Annette explained, "and I never understood how they felt until my terrible employer asked me not to wear frills. She said they weren't suitable for my position! It's all so relative, isn't it? Cecilia saw the panorama. I saw only my corner."
Annette slipped from the wall. "Must go," she said. "Dicky's coming out at eight. You want me to be happy?"
"Of course," said Stuyvesant. Annette's face changed. "Stuyv," she said, "it's everything when you find the one who fits your heart and mind.... Ask her. Please, Stuyv. I can't believe she doesn't care."
"You're awfully good," he answered huskily. "Lord, Annette! If you were right——!"
Annette stepped near him. For the first time since the nursery days she kissed him. "Stay here," she ordered, "and think it out. Bye!" With a wave she left. At the first turn in the road she looked back. Her cousin was still sitting on the wall, and he was staring intently at the cigarette between his fingers. Annette had seen that it had gone out before she started.
"Poor boy!" she said. "Poor boy!" and then she thought of Dicky, who had turned her hard little heart softer to all the world. She forgot the "poor boy" who sat alone on the wall. She forgot money and things, the two which had mattered most to her, and once had been her life. With a new look on her face, she dreamed of a future—a future at which she once would have laughed.