Off came the broad-brimmed hat just for an instant. Then he held out both hands.
“Let me help you, ladies,” he said, with the pleasantest of smiles. “Seeing that I have obtained the services of the only Jasper in sight, you’d better let me play porter. Going to take this tube train, ladies?”
“Yes, indeed!” cried Tavia, twinkling with smiles at once, and first to give him a bag.
Dorothy might have hesitated, but the young man was insistent and quick. He seized both bags as a matter of course, and Dorothy Dale could not pull hers away from him.
“You must let us pay your porter, then,” she said, in her quietly pleasant way.
“Bless you! we won’t fight over that,” chuckled the young man.
He was agreeably talkative, with that wholesome, free, yet chivalrous manner which the girls, especially the thoughtful Dorothy, had noticed as particular attributes of the men they had met during their memorable trip to the West, some months before.
She noticed, too, that his attentions to Tavia and herself were nicely balanced. Of course, Tavia, as she always did, began to run on in her light-hearted and irresponsible way; but though the young man listened to her with a quiet smile, he spoke directly to Dorothy quite as often as he did to the flyaway girl. He did not seek to take advantage of Tavia’s exuberant good spirits as so many strangers might have done.
Tavia’s flirtatious ways were a sore trial to her more sober chum; but this young man seemed to understand Tavia at once.
“Of course, you’re from the West?” Tavia finished one “rattlety-bang” series of remarks with this direct question.