“I forgot to say that Clara’s fianceé, I have been told, is the sole proprietor of some kind of a factory downtown which assures him quite a nice income. His name is Tolman Bike. Did you ever hear of him?”
“The name sounds familiar to me,” thought Dick, as he folded the letter and put it in his pocket. “Still I do not remember ever knowing such a person. Probably I recollect it, from reading that notice of Clara’s engagement, although I had forgotten the whole matter.”
Dick Treadwell was not feeling very easy. He longed for Penelope’s return, yet he dreaded it, knowing that he had no progress to report in the task she had imposed upon him. He had thought she would be pleased with his conduct in regard to Dido Morgan and Maggie Williams, but when she had expressed a hope that he had not been devoting himself to girls and wasting the time that belonged to the work he had undertaken, he felt a little dubious as to the way in which she would receive any account of the part he took with the poor girls whom he wished to befriend.
“Isn’t the matter of likes and dislikes a strange thing?” Dick asked, when, an hour later, he and Dido Morgan were dining together. He refilled the glasses which stood by their plates. “This is very good wine, don’t you think? Let me help you to some spaghetti. I have often wondered why at first meeting we conceive a regard for some people and a dislike for others.
“You remember the incident I related to you the first, or rather the second time you dined with me, of the man I met in the Hoffman House who warned me that I was shadowed. Well, I have run across him several times since. I have the strangest feeling for him, and he apparently dislikes me. I can’t say that I like him, but I have such a desire to be with and near him that I can’t say I dislike him either. By Jove, I was surprised when he fell against the bar that day and looked so miserably ill. I thought at first it was the sight of my name that affected him, but he assured me that it was a spasm of the heart, a chronic complaint of his.”
“What was his name?” asked Dido, breaking off a bit of bread. She was growing prettier every day since Richard had secured a position for her, and to-night she was bewitching in a new gray cloth gown.
“Clark, he said; I think I asked him for it,” said Dick, laughing.
“You don’t seem to have tired of going around to all sorts of restaurants,” he continued, noticing the happy expression on Dido’s pretty face.
“Tired of it!”
Her tone but faintly expressed what untold happiness those evenings had been to her.