“I have brought Miss Ascough and you some tea, dear.”
Mrs. Snow had entered the room, carrying a tray in her hand. She was a frail, pretty little thing, with beautiful reddish hair piled on top of her head. Mr. Snow went forward and took the tray from her hands, and, bending down, he kissed the hands holding it.
“Thank you, darling,” he murmured. “What an angel you are!”
She looked at him with such love and trust in her eyes that I decided no tale of mine should hurt her. I made up my mind, however, not to pose for Mr. Snow again. So there was another of my artists gone! I left that house wondering if it were possible to believe in any man, and then I thought of Mr. Rintoul and I felt warmed and comforted.
XXIX
IT was getting dark as I walked down Huntington Avenue and somebody was walking rapidly behind me, as if to catch up with me.
“Hallo, Marion!”
I turned, to see Jimmy Odell. He had been hanging around my lodging-house for days, and was always coaxing me to go to places with him and declaring that he was in love with me.
I liked Jimmy, though the people where I took my meals told me he was no good. They said his people had given him every advantage, but that Jimmy had played all his life and that his mother had spoiled him. However, I found him a most lovable boy, despite his slangy speech and pretended toughness of character. Jimmy liked to pretend that he was a pretty bold, bad man of the world. He was in his junior year at Harvard and about my own age.
Many a time when it seemed as if I could not stand my life, I was cheered by Jimmy with his happy, contagious laughter, and the little “treats” he would give me. Sometimes it was a ball game, sometimes a show and I had had many dinners and suppers with Jimmy. But Jimmy drank far too much. He didn’t get exactly drunk, but he carried a flask of whiskey with him, and he would say to whoever was about: