All the way down the four flights of stairs she wanted to flee back to her mother. It was with a cold impatience that she finally saw Walter approach the house, ten minutes late. He was so grotesque in his frantic, puffing hurry. He was no longer the brilliant Mr. Babson, but a moist young man who hemmed and sputtered, “Gee!—couldn’t find clean collar--hustled m’ head off—just missed Subway express—couldn’t make it—whew, I’m hot!”
“It doesn’t matter,” she condescended.
He dropped on the step just below her and mopped his forehead. Neither of them could say anything. He took off his horn-rimmed eye-glasses, carefully inserted the point of a pencil through the loop, swung them in a buzzing circle, and started to put them on again.
“Oh, keep them off!” she snapped. “You look so high-brow with them!”
“Y-yuh; why, s-sure!”
She felt very superior.
He feverishly ran a finger along the upper rim of his left ear, sprang up, stooped to take her hand, glared into her eyes till she shrank—and then a nail-cleaner, a common, ten-cent file, fell out of his inner pocket and clinked on the stone step.
“Oh, damn!” he groaned.
“I really think it is going to rain,” she said.
They both laughed.