"No, of course there isn't," he agreed; and she applauded him. "But there is a very excellent reason, all the same, why a girl shouldn't smoke."
"What?" she demanded.
"Makes her less agreeable to kiss."
"Well, I'll wait till somebody wants to kiss me," she said, gayly; "when they do, I'll give up cigarettes—and take to a pipe!" She pulled down the top of her desk and slipped the loop of the puppy's leash on her wrist. "As for smoking," she confessed, "I'm not awfully keen on it. Sometimes I forget to open my cigarette-case for days! But I have just as much right to do it as you have."
The defiance made him laugh. "That's like your sex, insisting that, because we make fools of ourselves, you will make fools of yourselves. That's your principle in demanding an unlimited suffrage."
But Fred was not listening. "I'm afraid you must clear out," she said; "Howard must be on hand by this time."
"I wonder when you'll earn the cost of that desk?" he mused, and looked about the office, with its one big window that muffled the roar of the city ten stories below, and framed, black against a lowering sky, the far-off circle of the hills. It was a gaunt little room, with its desk and straight chairs, and its walls hung with real-estate maps. A vision of Mrs. Payton's fire-lit upholstery flashed into his mind, and made him smile. What a contrast! "But this interests Fred," he thought; "and the petticoated easy-chairs don't. And the only thing that makes life endurable is an interest." He wondered, vaguely, what interests he had himself. Certainly his trustee accounts were not very vital interests! It occurred to him, watching Fred thrust some long and vicious pins through a very rakish hat, that when she settled down and married Maitland he would lose a distinct interest. "I'll have to transfer it to her infants," he thought, cynically; "I suppose I'll be godfather to the lot of 'em, and she and Howard, in the privacy of connubial bliss, will speculate as to how much I'll leave 'em— Damned if I leave them anything!" he ended, with a flare of temper.
"Come on," said Fred.
They went down-stairs together, and waited in the cold for five minutes until Howard came, brakes on, against the curb, in a great hurry, but not in the least apologetic.
"I stopped to look at some shells at Beasley's," he vouchsafed as Fred was climbing into the car; then opened his throttle, and Mr. Weston, standing on the corner, watched them leap away down the crowded street.