“Oh! nothing ever happens to Gretchen,” said Polly, laughing. “Tina is the one I’m anxious about.”
“So?” said the boy slowly. Twenty-four, nay, twelve hours earlier he would have spoken at once of the blue dress; but—after all, there were plenty of blue dresses in the world;—and—then—were classes so widely separated in America,—Republican America, that—Louis shrunk from formulating, even to himself, the thought in his mind.
He took the books, and carried them away in silence.
His modest tap at the door of the board-room was answered by a summons to enter; and when he deposited his burden upon the plain, deal table, with its covering of oilcloth, round which the managers sat upon much worn wooden chairs,—for there was little effort at luxury at “Prices,”—there was not a face in the room but wore a smile to greet him. They were gray-haired men, all of them, who had known him all his life, and they could not let him go without a pleasant word.
“Have you turned book-keeper, Herr Louis?” asked one. “We missed you at supper-time,” said another. “Ah! he was better employed, perhaps I hope she is pretty.” “Did you give her a good hug and a sounding kiss?” “Ah! leave that to him, he knows very well how these things are managed.” “He has a face to help him better with the girls than any of your advice.”
These were some of the things that were said to him before his father broke in roughly, “Hold your tongues, all of you! would you quite turn the boy’s head? What does it matter, a face! Hands are what we need in shoemaking.”
“The boy looks tired,” said the old president gently; “and you are all wrong, meine Herren. He has been doing works of charity, not courting. I saw you up-town, Louis, with your lame friend.”
“Yes, he enjoyed the ride,” said Louis. “I am glad to be of use to him, Herr President; they have all been so kind to me.”
“Quite right, my boy,” said the old man benignly; and, after a few more words, Louis took his leave.
For perhaps the first time in his life he stepped into the elevator; he who usually ran up the long, steep stairs as fleetly as a gazelle. Then, reaching his own little room, under the roof, he sat down, slowly and heavily, and looked about him. It was spotlessly clean, but with no attempt at beauty, except one or two of Freddy’s drawings; and, to the boy’s new sense of sight, repulsively bare and comfortless. He let his head sink hopelessly upon his hands. Look where he would, there was no place at “Prices” for Pinkie. With his best efforts he could not think her into his workaday world. It was not her fault, of course; the hardy arbor vitæ stands erect amidst the snows from which the rose must be carefully protected. Is the rose to blame? No, it is only a question of corresponding with one’s environment. Pinkie was, clearly and self-evidently, not created or evolved to correspond with any such environment as “Prices.”