"Big man," she rebuked, "I don't altogether understand you, but take care of your words. I like you too well to wish to see you die! Penn Service is sacred. Never speak against it, even when you believe yourself alone or in the safest company. It has a million eyes and a million ears, and they are everywhere. And now, let me take you back to the Belleclaire. After to-morrow I will see you more suitably lodged. To-night, however, you must put up as best you may with its inconvenience and bareness."
Its "inconvenience and bareness," however, amounted to luxury in the eyes of these benighted wanderers from another age. They were very well content to have one more evening alone together. The Loveliest, it seemed, was attending an important social function to which, until they had actually claimed their laurels in the approaching competition, she could not take them.
"Nobody is anybody here," she said, "except the Servants themselves, the Superlatives and the family connections of each. There are only three or four hundred of us, all told, but we manage to keep the social ball rolling. I can promise you a gay winter. Now, don't attempt to go out on the streets."
Trenmore frowned. He had a secret desire to visit a certain house on Walnut Street and of course he wouldn't find the place unchanged, and the dust still lying there on the library floor. But he wished to look, at least. "Why not?" he inquired.
"Because I am responsible for your appearance at the contests to-morrow. Don't be offended. Should anything happen to you it would not only make me very unhappy, but might cause me serious trouble. The competitions are held in the Temple to-morrow at high noon. I'll call for you early and see to it that everything goes through just right. You've no idea what a pleasant future lies in store for you, big man!"
"Oh, haven't I, though?" muttered Trenmore as he stood with the others in the lobby and watched her retreating back. "Madam Green-eyes, it's yourself has a pleasant surprise on its way to you, and I'm the sorry man to see trouble come to any woman, but it's yourself deserves it, I'm thinking-and anyway, I couldn't let my little sister Viola be made the slave you'd gladly see her, or I've misread the green eyes of you!"
"What's that you're saying, Terry?" queried Drayton.
"Just a benediction on the kind-hearted lady, Bobby. Bertram, where are you off to? Didn't you hear herself saying we are all to stop inside?"
"Aw, say, boss, I'm fair smothered. That doll would talk the hind wheel off a street car. It wasn't me she went bail for and I won't get into trouble."
"See that you don't, then," counseled Trenmore, and let him go.