Marie did her best during those last few days, but all her efforts went singularly unrewarded.
Chris was too engrossed in his preparations to take much notice of her, though once he brought her the old tweed coat to have a button sewn on, and once he asked diffidently if she would mind marking some new handkerchiefs for him.
Marie did both little services with passionate gratitude to him for having asked her. During the last day she followed him round the house just as she had been wont to do when they were both children and he had come home for the holidays.
She ran errands for him, and did all the odd jobs which he did not want to do for himself, and at the last, when his fattest portmanteau would not close, she sat on the top of it to try and coax it to behave.
Chris was kneeling on the floor in his shirt sleeves, tugging at the straps and swearing under his breath. He looked up at her once to say what a pity it was she did not weigh more, but there was a smile in his eyes. "You're such a kid," he said affectionately.
But he managed to fasten the bag at last, and stood up, hot and perspiring.
"You've got my address, haven't you?" he asked, looking round his dismantled room. "Write if you want anything, and I'll send you some postcards. You've got plenty of money in the bank, and there's heaps more when that's gone. Have a good time."
"Yes," said Marie, and wondered if he would be very contemptuous if she told him that it felt like dying to know that he was going away and that she was to be left behind.
He had a last hurried lunch with her and Miss Chester, during which he looked at his watch almost every minute, and hoped that the taxi would not forget to come.
123 "You could have had the car, Chris," Miss Chester said, but Chris replied that it was not worth while and that a taxi would do.