The concealed girl sat up. “Here I am,” she announced shyly. “I fell asleep.”
“Oh, then I’m afraid I waked you up with my silly hammering,” said the man.
“N-no. It doesn’t matter. I didn’t mind. I—I mean, I liked it,” stammered the girl, falling into her usual acutely zero feeling in the presence of the masculine gender.
“Then go and play it again, Jack,” commanded Miss Greene, “while I get off my things. And then go away. You can come back for dinner. Miss Cole and I have important things to talk over.”
“Oh, no! Please! I can come some other time,” protested Darcy in a flutter of embarrassment. “I don’t want to drive Mr.—Mr.—-him away.”
“Mr. Jacob Remsen has all the time in the world,” said Gloria calmly. “Time is the least of his troubles. He kills it at sight.”
“Don’t mind her, Miss Corey,” put in Remsen.
Darcy, noting the error in her name, wondered petulantly why Gloria didn’t introduce them in proper form. But her uneasiness and gaucherie presently dissipated before the cordial and winning simplicity of Gloria’s man. And, to her own surprise, she found herself volunteering a harmonic solution of the difficult change where he had blundered over the transition, and humming the melody while she played her version. He accepted it with enthusiasm.
“Sing it,” he urged. “I like your voice—what little you let us hear of it.”
Instantly Darcy stiffened up inside and stammered a refusal. She didn’t mean to be ungracious to this sunny and inspiriting young fellow. It was just her unhappy consciousness of a cramped and graceless self. Remsen took it with matter-of-fact good humor.