Not until Nancy, after dismissing the hansom, found herself solitary and alone on the sidewalk in front of the gayly lighted little Bohemian restaurant, did she realize the foolishness, the craziness, of her undertaking. In fact, she had no very clear idea of what that undertaking was.
She looked after the retreating hansom, and a wretched, half-frightened homesickness swept over her.
Suppose Phil had not received the telegram! Suppose, receiving it, he had refused to come! She couldn’t blame him, although he had once said that, no matter what——
And then—in speaking of it afterward, Nancy always declared that it was a positive physiological fact that at that moment her heart was located somewhere in the roof of her mouth—some one caught both her hands in his, some one’s glad voice cried “Nance!” and in the twinkling of an eye the homesickness and the memory of the weeks of wretchedness had vanished, and all the misery of the past and all the uncertainty of the future were swallowed up in the joy of the present.
“I’m so sorry to be late.” Phil’s voice was as remorseful as though he had committed all of the seven deadly sins. “I received your telegram just as I was leaving the club to keep an engagement. Took me ten minutes at the ’phone to break the engagement decently. Jove! but I am glad to see you,” he went on, enthusiastically.
“I hoped you would be, but of course I didn’t know.” It was not at all what Nancy had intended to say, but her heart thumped so furiously that she could scarcely think. She was mortally afraid that Phil would hear it pounding away.
“You know I told you that I should always be glad to see you, Nance.” Then, abruptly: “I hope you haven’t caught cold standing here waiting. It’s not warm to-night. Shall we go inside now?” Nancy nodded, and Phil led the way into Scarlatti’s.
She took the whole room in at a glance, and breathed a sigh of contentment so long, so deep, that it must have come from the tips of her toes.
There was the same absurd little orchestra in their same absurd “monkey clothes,” the same motley crowd of half foreign, wholly happy men and women, the same indescribable odor of un-American cooking—she even rejoiced in that—and, best of all, on the long shelf that ran around the four sides of the room were the same little, fat, bright blue pitchers with great naming vermilion roses on either side. To be sure, she knew that one was missing, but that was mere detail.
“Phil,” Nancy whispered, eagerly, pulling his coat sleeve violently as the waiter, with much bowing and scraping, started to lead the way in another direction, “our table is empty. Right over there—the tenth from the door. We always had that one, you know, under the picture of ‘The Girl with the Laughing Eyes.’ I always remembered that it was the tenth.”