Dorothy’s own cousins, Ned and Nat White, though collegians, and of what Tavia called “the harum-scarum type” like herself, were clean, upright fellows and possessed no low ideas or tastes. It seemed to Dorothy for a man to make the acquaintance of a strange girl on the street and talk with her as Garry Knapp seemed to have done, savored of a very coarse mind, indeed.
And all the more did she criticise his action because he had taken advantage of the situation of herself and her friend and “picked acquaintance” in somewhat the same fashion with them on their entrance into New York.
He was “that kind.” He went about making the acquaintance of every girl he saw who would give him a chance to speak to her! That is the way it looked to Dorothy in her present mood.
She gave Garry Knapp credit for being a Westerner and being not as conservative as Eastern folk. She knew that people in the West were freer and more easily to become acquainted with than Eastern people. But she had set that girl down as a common flirt, and she believed no gentleman would so easily and naturally fall into conversation with her as Garry Knapp had, unless he were quite used to making such acquaintances.
It shamed Dorothy, too, to think that the young man should go straight from her and Tavia to the girl.
That was the thought that made the keenest wound in Dorothy Dale’s mind.
They shopped “furiously,” as Tavia declared, all the morning, only resting while they ate a bite of luncheon in one of the big stores, and then went at it again immediately afterward.
“The boys talk about ‘bucking the line’ about this time of year—football slang, you know,” sighed Tavia; “but believe me! this is some ‘bucking.’ I never shopped so fast and furiously in all my life. Dorothy, you actually act as though you wanted to get it all over with and go home. And we can stay a week if we like. We’re having no fun at all.”
Dorothy would not answer. She wished they could go home. It seemed to her as though New York City was not big enough in which to hide away from Garry Knapp.
They could not secure seats—not those they wanted—for the play Ned and Nat had told them to see, for that evening; and Tavia insisted upon going back to the hotel.