“I want you to give me back that photograph,” she said in a low voice. Phillip’s own cheeks reddened.
“Certainly,” he answered. “I have no wish to keep it. There are too many like it in—in circulation.”
Betty glared, almost speechless.
“I shall be at home to-morrow afternoon,” she said finally with superb dignity. “If your studies will allow, please bring it then.”
Phillip bowed. The car clanged its way up to the waiting-room and they scuttled for it. Phillip politely offered to help Betty up the steps. Betty looked the other way and leaped up them unassisted. Phillip caught a bewildering gleam of white skirts and patent-leather Oxfords. Then he and Everett were left standing bareheaded in the falling flakes.
“Subway-to-Park-Street,” shouted the starter hoarsely.
Everett dragged Phillip from the path of a trundling car. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go and get some red-hot chocolate. It will warm us up.”
“Yes,” echoed Phillip vaguely, “it will warm us up.” He followed the other through the crowd, dazed, miserable, and only came to a partial recovery of his faculties when he had fallen over a suit case and sent a harmless gentleman in a clerical garb staggering to the wall.
“Mamma,” asked Betty that evening, when they were alone, “what were you and Mr. Ryerson talking about so eagerly this afternoon?”
“Talking about?” repeated her mother. “Oh, he was telling me about his home in Virginia, dear.”