A doctor. A pill shooter. Jud Clark!
IX
Elizabeth had gone about all day with a smile on her lips and a sort of exaltation in her eyes. She had, girl fashion, gone over and over the totally uneventful evening they had spent together, remembering small speeches and gestures; what he had said and she had answered.
She had, for instance, mentioned Clare Rossiter, very casually. Oh very, very casually. And he had said: “Clare Rossiter? Oh, yes, the tall blonde girl, isn't she?”
She was very happy. He had not seemed to find her too young or particularly immature. He had asked her opinion on quite important things, and listened carefully when she replied. She felt, though, that she knew about one-tenth as much as he did, and she determined to read very seriously from that time on. Her mother, missing her that afternoon, found her curled up in the library, beginning the first volume of Gibbon's “Rome” with an air of determined concentration, and wearing her best summer frock.
She did not intend to depend purely on Gibbon's “Rome,” evidently.
“Are you expecting any one, Elizabeth?” she asked, with the frank directness characteristic of mothers, and Elizabeth, fixing a date in her mind with terrible firmness, looked up absently and said:
“No one in particular.”
At three o'clock, with a slight headache from concentration, she went upstairs and put up her hair again; rather high this time to make her feel taller. Of course, it was not likely he would come. He was very busy. So many people depended on him. It must be wonderful to be like that, to have people needing one, and looking out of the door and saying: “I think I see him coming now.”