He lay very quiet until she had finished the chapter.
“Much obliged,” he said absently. “You run along now. I’ll be all right.”
In the hall she met the maid coming to announce a caller.
Jerry, chastely attired in a new fall suit, greeted her with the ambassadorial dignity that he assumed for social occasions, with apologies to J. C. E. He could bow and shake hands like his idol and mentor, and though his manner of speech was still his own, he had greatly subdued its original violences. The area of collar and cuff that could be sustained on a salary lately increased to eighty dollars a month might provoke smiles; but Jerry was not troubled. By discreetly soliciting custom for a tailor who made a twenty-five dollar suit which only the most sophisticated sartorial critic could distinguish from a sixty-dollar creation, he got his clothes at a discount. While he had not yet acquired a dress-suit or a silk hat, he boasted a dinner-coat and a cutaway. He had dedicated the latter by wearing it boldly to Christ Church, where he was ushered to the third pew from the chancel and placed beside a lady whose kneelings and risings he imitated sedulously. This was Eaton’s church, and while that gentleman was not present on that particular morning, a tablet commemorating his father’s virtues (twenty years warden and vestry-man) gave Jerry a thrill of pride and a sense of perspective. His mother had been a Campbellite, and a vested clergy and choir, sprung upon him suddenly, had awed him to a mood of humility.
“I’d been wondering as I came up what I’d do if you were out: I couldn’t decide whether to jump in the river or lie down in the middle of the street and be killed by a large, fat auto. Nan,”—he held her hand and gazed into her face with tragic intensity,—“Nan, you have saved my life!”
She met him promptly on his own ground.
“I should have worn mourning for you, Jerry; you may be sure of that.”
“The thought seems to give you pleasure. But I like you best in blue—that suit you had on the day we paddled up the river still haunts me.”
“Oh, that was a last year’s bird-nest. I have a lot better clothes than that, but I don’t wear them to picnics.”
“You’d be dazzling in anything; I’m dead sure of that!”