“I’m not dreaming it now, Nanny dear. We’re friends for keeps. You can’t lose me; I’m not that sort. Come along, Nan. I’m fed up on lobster, and I’m much more fed up on those fiddlers three—like Old King Cole’s. But I seem to miss a jolly old soul in this crowd of two!”
Cis jumped up, paid the reckoning, and tucked Nan under her arm after her usual custom, her height and Nan’s being adapted to this arrangement.
Thus they left the restaurant, Cis humming an old song which she had picked up from one of her elders: “You can’t lose me, mah Honey,” as appropriate to her assurance, to Nan, and as if she had not a care in the world.
CHAPTER III
MISS JEANETTE LUCAS
CIS spent Saturday forenoon picking up her belongings, packing certain things in a large old trunk, others of more immediate emphasis in a perfectly new, smaller trunk, leaving pictures and the few pieces of bric-a-brac which she owned, to be boxed.
She was entirely cheerful over these preparations, whistling softly between closed teeth, sometimes breaking into a snatch of song; it was evident that change was by no means unwelcome to her.
Nan Dowling, on the contrary, sat on the edge of the bed, avoiding physical comfort as her body dropped from extreme mental discomfort, watching Cis with her hands clasped, hanging forward between her knees; her lips drawn down, her eyes gloomy. She had the forenoon free because she was going on duty at one, Cis’s old time, having made an exchange with another girl who gladly accepted the chance to have an evening off, especially Saturday evening.
“Cis, don’t take everything you own with you!” remonstrated Nan. “Pack a trunk to leave at my house.”
“I wonder why?” said Cis absent-mindedly. “Believe I’ll give this blouse to the waitress. It’s a bit tight for me, though it’s still as good as ever, but that poor little lean thing will like something decent, and she’ll be able to lap it over the way it was meant to go; I can’t.”
She held up a pretty linen shirt-waist, turning it by the shoulders, considering it in the sunshine’s strong light.