"It's been hard for me, too; harder, I think, than for you. It wasn't fair to me to let me—think what I did and say what I did. I'm so sorry, Nance,—and ashamed. So ashamed! You might have told me."
"And have you put your foot down on the whole thing; not much!"
He laughed. He's got such a boyish laugh in spite of his chin and his eye-glasses and the bigness of him. He filled my glass for me and helped me again to the salad.
Oh, Mag, it's such fun to be a woman and have a man wait on you like that! It's such fun to be hungry and to sit down to a jolly little table just big enough for two, with carnations nodding in the tall slim vase, with a fat, soft-footed, quick-handed waiter dancing behind you, and something tempting in every dish your eye falls on.
It's a gay, happy, easy world, Maggie darlin'. I vow I can't find a dark corner in it—not to-day.
None but the swellest place in town was good enough, Obermuller had said, for us to celebrate in. The waiters looked queerly at us when we came in—me in my dusty shoes and mussed hair and old rig, and Mr. O. in his working togs. But do you suppose we cared?
He was smoking and I was pretending to eat fruit when at last I got fairly launched on my story.
He listened to it all with never a word of interruption. Sometimes I thought he was so interested that he couldn't bear to miss a word I said. And then again I fancied he wasn't listening at all to me; only watching me and listening to something inside of himself.
Can you see him, Mag, sitting opposite me there at the pretty little table, off in a private room by ourselves? He looked so big and strong and masterful, with his eyes half closed, watching me, that I hugged myself with delight to think that I—I, Nancy Olden, had done something for him he couldn't do for himself.
It made me so proud, so tipsily vain, that as I leaned forward eagerly talking, I felt that same intoxicating happiness I get on the stage when the audience is all with me, and the two of us—myself and the many-handed, good-natured other fellow over on the other side of the footlights—go careering off on a jaunt of fun and fancy, like two good playmates.