“Know him! I know him? He bunked in with me for two weeks at Grandpré. He was captain of a machine-gun outfit sent down to help us clean out that little wasp’s nest. His name’s Tenney, and if ever there was a hellion in a fight! And see—what he’s come to! My God!”
“Well, don’t cry about it,” advised the girl, serenely, though it was hard for her to keep her voice steady. “There’s nothing to do about it, is there?”
“Isn’t there!” retorted the youth, rising purposefully. “I’m going to get him and find him a job that’s fit for him if I have to take him into partnership. Of all the dash-blanked-dod-blizzened—”
“Caspar! What are you going to do? Don’t. You’ll embarrass him frightfully.”
But he was already heading off his prey at the exit. Bobbie saw her painter’s face flame into welcome, then stiffen into dismay. The pair vanished beyond the watcher’s ken. On his return the gilded youth behaved strangely. From time to time he shook his head. From time to time he chuckled. And, while Bobbie was talking to her other neighbor, he shot curious and amused glances at her. He told her nothing. But his interest in his supper returned. Bobbie’s didn’t.
To discuss the social aspects of menial service with a practitioner of it who has been admitted to a certain implicit equality is a difficult and delicate matter for a girl brought up in Roberta Holland’s school. Several times after the restaurant encounter she essayed it; trying both the indirect approach and the method of extreme frankness. Neither answered. Julien responded to her advances by alternate moods of extreme gloom and slyly inexplicable amusement. Bobbie gave it up, concluding that he was in a very queer mood, anyway. She was right. He was.
The next episode of their progress took the form of a veritable unmasking which, perversely enough, only fixed the mask tighter upon Julien Tenney. By way of loosening up his wrist for the open season, Peter Quick Banta had taken advantage of an amiable day to sketch out a composite floral and faunal scheme on the flagging in front of Thornsen’s Élite Restaurant, when Miss Holland, in passing, paused to observe and wonder. At the same moment, Julien hurrying around the corner, all but ran her down. She nodded toward the decorator of sidewalks.
“Isn’t he the funny man that you were with the first time I saw you?”
“The very same,” responded Julien with twinkling eyes.
“What is he doing?”