They walked to a lunch room, where he found seats and brought her the sandwich and coffee she insisted was all she wanted. He was observing her narrowly for signs of discontent, but she had never seemed happier. He understood perfectly that she wished her new activities to be taken as a matter of course, and he carefully refrained from expressing his great pride in her. As long as she continued to countenance him, he was satisfied, and she had shown in countless ways that she liked him and believed in him.
He introduced her to a bank clerk who paused in his hurried exit to speak to him and incidentally to have a closer look at Nan. A girl nodded to him across the room; he explained that she was one of the smartest girls in town—“the whole show in an insurance office; the members of the firm don’t turn round unless she says so.”
“Just think,” Nan remarked, “I might have died without knowing how it feels to be a poor working girl.”
“Well, don’t die now that you’ve found it out! It would be mighty lonesome on earth without you. Have a chocolate eclair,” he added hastily,—“‘business girl’s special.’”
“No, thanks. If I don’t turn up to-night with an appetite for dinner Mrs. Copeland will be scared and send for the doctor.”
“By the way, I wish you’d casually mention me to that gifted lady; I’d like to hop off at Stop 3 some evening without being consumed by the dog. How about it?”
“Oh, she’ll stand for it! She’ll stand for ’most anybody who shows up with a clean face and a kind heart. She’s an angel, Jerry. She’s the finest woman that ever lived!”
“I’d sort o’ figured that out for myself, just passing her on the boulevards. I thought I’d try for a rise out of Cecil the other night and just mentioned her with a gentle o. k. I’d gone up to his office to see if I could shine his shoes or do any little thing like that for him, and he looked at me so long I nearly had nervous prostration, and then he said: ‘My dear boy, the poverty of your vocabulary is a constant grief to me!’—just like that. I guess he likes her all right.”
“She has a good many admirers,” Nan replied noncommittally, as she crumpled her paper napkin. “She can’t help it.”
“Well, anything Cecil wants he ought to have.”