“But you got to marry somebody,” Teddy insisted.
“I don’t have to,—there, that’s well in at last,—at least not for a long time, till I get good and ready. And then he’ll have to be extra good and handsome and rich. I’m awfully ambitious, you know.”
“That’s all right, kid,”—Teddy swallowed a lump in his throat,—“but take care you don’t put it off too long.”
The girl looked up from her work with a puzzled air.
“Take a good slant at me,” explained Teddy. “Don’t you see anything in my eyes?”
“They look queer, kind of anxious and strained. They’re like Will Ryan’s.”
“Everybody that stays in this game as long as we have gets the same look. It comes from being scared stiff once or twice, and not being able to forget it.”
“I’m never scared,” said Miss Simmons, with a toss of her shapely little head.
“You haven’t begun yet. Wait till some one drops in front of you in the last lap, and you have just half a second to make up your mind whether you’ll run over him or take a chance among the crowd. One stunt like that, and you won’t be so pretty.”
“Then you can ask me again,” said Miss Simmons, with her usual quiet self-possession. “I can almost see you doing it.”