“But you'll call, won't you?”
“Of course. Anything you say—always.”
“You're the damnedest decentest woman in the world, Charity Coe; and if—”
He paused. It is just as well not to go iffing about such matters.
Charity stopped short in her laughter. She and Jim stared at each other again across that abyss. It was terribly deep, but only a step over.
They heard the door-bell faintly, and a sense of guilt confused them again. Jim rose and wished himself out of it.
“It's only Prissy Atterbury,” said Charity.
Prissy came in tugging at the ferocious mustaches that only emphasized his lady-like carriage. He paused on the door-sill to stare and gasp, “My Gawd, at it again!”
They did not know what he meant, and he would not explain that he had seen them together ages ago and spread the gossip that they were in intrigue. The coincidence of his recurrence on their scene was not strange, for Charity had been using him as a kind of messenger-boy.
Prissy was that sort. He looked the gentleman and was, a somewhat too gentle gentleman, but very useful to ladies who needed an uncompromising escort and were no longer young enough to permit of chaperonage. He was considered perfectly harmless, but he was a fiend of gossip, and he rejoiced in the recrudescence of the Jim and Charity affair.