“I guess I must love you, Dan. I guess I must have for a long time.”
“God, I’m so glad! How long?”
“Why, ever since you used to come to the soda-fountain and ask for chocolate. You don’t know how sweet you were when you were a little boy.”
She put her slender hand against his hot cheek. “And you are nothing but a little boy now! I think I must be crazy!”
As he protested, as she listened intently to what his emotion taught him to say to her, she whispered close to his ear:
“What will you take, little boy?”
And he answered: “I’ll take you—you!”
At a slight sound in the next room Letty Lane started as though the interruption really brought her to her senses, put her hand to her disheveled hair, and before she could prevent it, Dan had called Mrs Higgins to “come in,” and the woman, in response, came into the sitting-room. The boy went up to her and took her hands eagerly, and said:
“It’s all right, all right, Mrs. Higgins. Just think of it! She belongs to me!”
“Oh, don’t be a perfect lunatic, Dan,” the actress exclaimed, half laughing, half crying, “and don’t listen to him, Higgins. He’s just crazy.”