Valentine consulted the tall man in uniform at the door of the flower shop, and this menial consulted some one within, who must have consulted a directory, judging from the time it took to obtain the correct address. With his eyes straight in front of him, as a chauffeur's eyes should always be, he then drove rapidly down the avenue.
And on that beautiful morning Mr. Vandeford's luck was with him. Valentine whirled expertly up to the curb in front of the large, hospitable building which had emblazoned over its door the impressive Y. W. C. A. letters, letters that send a beacon all over the known world as they did to Mr. Vandeford in little and unimportant New York. Mr. Vandeford got out of the car with hurried grace in his long limbs and, with actual trepidation, went in through the door, into a world he had never even thought of before. He had entered many an African lion jungle with less fear. He glanced with awe at the natty young woman in white linen who presided at the desk, and wanted intensely to put his flowers behind him and back out of the door rather than approach and ask for the lady to whom he wished to donate them. In fact, he might have accomplished such a retreat if again luck had not come his way.
"Oh, Mr. Vandeford, how glad I am that you got here before we went out to the museum," exclaimed a fluty, slurring young voice just behind him, and he found that the gray eyes with the black lashes were just as unusual as he had decided they could not possibly be in the interval that had elapsed since he had looked into them. "Oh, how lovely!"
The last exclamation was made over the edge of the bouquet, which he had tendered Miss Adair as silently as a school-boy hands out his first bunch of buttercups to the lady for whom he has picked them.
"Did you come for me to go to help work on the play?" was the energetic question that brought him out of his trance.
"No, not right now," he answered haltingly, and when he realized how many times he would have to put her off with words to that same effect, his trance became a panic.
"When are you going to need me?" Miss Adair asked him with a direct and business-like look right to his eyes. "I am ready for work now."
"Now what'll I do?" he demanded of himself.