“Oh, come on,” she said, in an impatient maner. “I’ll pay for it.”
I can read Jane’s inmost thoughts, and I read them then. She considered that I had cold feet financially, although with almost $945.00 in the bank. Therefore I said at once:
“Don’t be silly. It is my party. And we’ll take some candy home.”
However, I need not have worried, for we met Tommy Gray in the tea shop, and he paid for everything.
I pause here to reflect. How strange to look back, and think of all that has since hapened, and that I then considered that Tommy Gray was interested in Jane and never gave me a thought. Also that I considered that the look he gave me now and then was but a friendly glanse! Is it not strange that Romanse comes thus into our lives, through the medium of a tea-cup, or an eclair, unheralded and unsung, yet leaving us never the same again?
Even when Tommy bought us candy and carried mine under his arm while leaving Jane to get her own from the counter, I suspected nothing. But when he said to me, “Gee, Bab, you’re geting to be a regular Person,” and made no such remark to Jane, I felt that it was rather pointed.
Also, on walking up the Avenue, he certainly walked nearer me than Jane. I beleive she felt it, to, for she made a sharp speach or to about his Youth, and what he meant to do when he got big. And he replied by saying that she was big enough allready, which hurt because Jane is plump and will eat starches anyhow.
Tommy Gray had improved a great deal since Xmas. He had at that time apeared to long for his head. I said this to Jane, soto voce, while he was looking at some neckties in a window.
“Well, his head is big enough now,” she said in a snapish maner. “It isn’t very long, Bab, since you considered him a mere Child.”
“He is twenty,” I asserted, being one to stand up for my friends under any and all circumstanses.