"I think I'd better advertise in all the daily papers!" she announced, eagerly.
"You're a good fellow," he said; "you take your medicine and don't make faces."
"Make faces? Oh, you mean because you called me down last night? Bless you, if it amuses you, it doesn't hurt me!"
The sense of her youth came over him in a pang of loneliness, and with it, curiously enough, an impulse of flight, which made him say, abruptly: "I shall probably go abroad in January. Can I trust you not to advertise yourself into bankruptcy before I get back?"
"Oh, Mr. Weston," she said, blankly; "how awful! Don't go!"
"You don't need me," he assured her; but a faint pleasure stirred about his heart.
"Need you? Why, I simply couldn't live without you! In the first place, my business would go to pot, without your advice; and then—well, you know how it is. You are the only person who speaks my language. Grandmother talks about my vulgarities, and Aunt Bessie talks about my stomach, and the Childs cousins talk about my vices—but nobody talks about my interests, except you. Don't go and leave me," she pleaded with him.
The glow of pleasure about his heart warmed into actual happiness. "Please don't think I approve of you!"
She looked at him with her gray, direct eyes, and nodded. "I know you don't. But I don't mind;—you understand."