Kedzie did not know that the operator behind the wall could peek and peer while his picture-wheel rolled out the cataract of photographs. Ferriday was careful of her—or of himself. He held her hand, of course, and murmured to her how stunning she was, but he made no effort to make love, to her great comfort and regret.
At length he invited her to ride home in his limousine, but he did not invite her to dinner. She told herself that she would have had to decline. But she would have liked to be asked.
While he rhapsodized once more about her future she was thinking of her immediate penury. As she approached the street of her residence she realized that she must either starve till pay-day or borrow. It was a bad beginning, but better than a hopeless ending. After several gasps of hesitation she finally made her plea:
“I'm awfully sorry to have to trouble you, Mr. Ferriday, but I'm—Well, could you lend me twenty-five dollars?”
“My dear child, take fifty,” he cried.
She shook her head, but it hurt her to see the roll of bills he dived for and brought up, and the careless grace with which he peeled two leaves from the cabbage. Easy money is always attended with resentment that more did not come along. Kedzie pouted at her folly in not accepting the fifty. If she had said, “Lend me fifty,” he would have offered her a hundred. But the twenty-five was salvation, and it would buy her food enough to keep her and her useless husband alive, and to buy her a pair of shoes and some gloves.
As the car drew near her corner she cried that she had some shopping to do and escaped again at the drug-store.
She found her husband at home. There was an unwonted authority about his greeting:
“Well, young woman, you may approach and kiss my hand. I am a gentleman with a job. I am a Chicago gentleman with a job.”
“You don't mean it!” Kedzie gasped; and kissed him from habit with more respect than her recent habit had shown.