"I don't care," she said, doggedly; "when you begin you've got to put up something. I'm putting up my time. If I come out even—"
"You won't," he prophesied.
"Your old dames are coming to-morrow," she said. She had fastened Zip to the umbrella-rack and was sitting on her office table, showing a candid and very pretty leg in a thin silk stocking; she looked at him with the unselfconscious gaze of a child.
"They are to arrive at five, and I'm scared to death for fear that the walk to the Episcopal church is six feet short of half a mile! I wish I had a motor to run around and look at places. Don't you think, as an investment, I could have a motor?"
"I do not!" he said. "Maitland made that alarming suggestion, and I told him not to put such ideas into your head."
"He's on the track of three Ohio girls who want five rooms and a bath, for light housekeeping, furnished. He's going to haul me round in his go-cart to look at some flats. Trouble is, I can't charge my full commission—they're poor. Students at the College of Elocution. Why do girls always want to elocute?"
"Why do they want to run real-estate offices? It's the same thing. Strikes me Howard hauls you round in his go-cart a good deal."
She shrieked with laughter. "Nothing doing! Nothing doing! I see your little hopeful thought. You've got me on your shoulders, like the aged Anchises, and you hoped that Howard might come to the rescue. Mr. Weston, I suppose your aunts, or cousins, or whatever they are, think I'm a freak?"
"Well, you are," he said; "I'll tell you what they think: they think (not having seen you) that you are a 'sweet girl who is doing something very kind for two old ladies.'"
"A 'sweet girl'! Me, a 'sweet girl'?"