She passed in through the dingy door. It closed behind her, and Wally stood for some moments staring at it with a gloomy repulsion. He thought he had never seen a dingier door.
Then he started to walk back to his apartment. He walked very quickly, with clenched hands. He was wondering if after all there was not something to be said for the methods of the caveman when he went a-wooing. Twinges of conscience the caveman may have had when all was over, but at least he had established his right to look after the woman he loved.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
§ 1.
“They tell me … I am told … I am informed … No, one moment, Miss Frisby.”
Mrs Peagrim wrinkled her fair forehead. It has been truly said that there is no agony like the agony of literary composition, and Mrs. Peagrim was having rather a bad time getting the requisite snap and ginger into her latest communication to the press. She bit her lip, and would have passed her twitching fingers restlessly through her hair but for the thought of the damage which such an action must do to her coiffure. Miss Frisby, her secretary, an anaemic and negative young woman, waited patiently, pad on knee, and tapped her teeth with her pencil.
“Please do not make that tapping noise, Miss Frisby,” said the sufferer querulously. “I cannot think. Otie, dear, can’t you suggest a good phrase? You ought to be able to, being an author.”
Mr Pilkington, who was strewn over an arm-chair by the window, awoke from his meditations, which, to judge from the furrow just above the bridge of his tortoiseshell spectacles and the droop of his weak chin, were not pleasant. It was the morning after the production of “The Rose of America,” and he had passed a sleepless night, thinking of the harsh words he had said to Jill. Could she ever forgive him? Would she have the generosity to realize that a man ought not to be held accountable for what he says in the moment when he discovers that he has been cheated, deceived, robbed,—in a word, hornswoggled? He had been brooding on this all night, and he wanted to go on brooding now. His aunt’s question interrupted his train of thought.
“Eh?” he said vaguely, gaping.
“Oh, don’t be so absent-minded!” snapped Mrs Peagrim, not unjustifiably annoyed. “I am trying to compose a paragraph for the papers about our party tonight, and I can’t get the right phrase … Read what you’ve written, Miss Frisby.”