Just Around the Corner Part 5

"You sure can run a machine, Mr. Barker."

"You wait till I let loose some speed along the Hudson road, and then you'll see some real drivin'; last night wasn't nothin'."

"Oh, Mr. Barker!"

"Call me Jim," he said.

"Jim," she repeated, softly, after him.

The day was crowded with appointments. She worked unceasingly until the nerves at the back of her head were strained and aching, and tired shadows appeared under her eyes. The languor of spring oppressed her.

To her surprise, Mr. Chase appeared at four o'clock. At the sight of him the point of her little scissors slipped into the unoffending cuticle of the hand she was grooming. She motioned him to a chair along the wall.

"In just a few minutes, Mr. Chase."

"Thank you," he replied, seating himself and watching her with interested, near-sighted eyes.

A nervousness sent the blood rus.h.i.+ng to her head. The low drone of Ethyl's voice talking to a customer, the tick of the clock, the click and sough of the elevator were thrice magnified. She could feel the gush of color to her face.

The fat old gentleman whose fingers she had been administering placed a generous bonus on the table and ambled out. She turned her burning eyes upon Mr. Chase and spoke slowly to steady her voice. She was ashamed of her unaccountable nervousness and of the suffocating dryness in her throat.

"Ready for you, Mr. Chase."

He came toward her with a peculiar slowness of movement, a characteristic slowness which was one of the trivial things which burned his attractiveness into her consciousness. In the stuffiness of her own little room she had more than once closed her eyes and deliberately pictured him as he came toward her table, gentle yet eager, with a deference which was new as it was delightful to her.

As he approached her she snapped a flexible file between her thumb and forefinger, and watched it vibrate and come to a jerky stop; then she looked up.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Chase."

"Good afternoon, Miss Sprunt. You see, I am following your advice." He took the chair opposite her.

"I--I want to thank you for the violets. They are the first real hint of May I've had."

"You knew they came from me?"

"Yes."

"How?"

"Why--I--why, I just knew."

She covered her confusion by removing and replacing crystal bottle-stoppers.

"I'm glad that you knew they came from me, Miss Sprunt."

"Yes, I knew that they could come from no one but you--they were so simple and natural and--sweet."

She laughed a pitch too high and plunged his fingers into water some degrees too hot. He did not wince, but she did.

"Oh, Mr. Chase, forgive me. I--I've scalded your fingers."

"Why," he replied, not taking his eyes from her face, "so you have!"

They both laughed.

Across the room Miss Ethyl coughed twice. "I always say," she observed to her customer, "a workin'-girl can't be too careful of her actions.

That's why I am of a retiring disposition and don't try to force myself on n.o.body."

Mr. Chase regarded the shadows beneath Miss Sprunt's eyes with a pucker between his own.

"You don't get much of the springtime in here, do you, Miss Sprunt?"

"No," she replied, smiling faintly. "The only way we can tell the seasons down here is by the midwinter Elks convention and the cloak drummers who come to buy fur coats in July."

"You poor little girl," he said, slowly. "What you need is air--good, wholesome air, and plenty of it."

"Oh, I get along all right," she said, biting at her nether lip.

"You're confined too closely, Miss Sprunt."

"Life isn't all choice," she replied, briefly.

"Forgive me," he said.

"I walk home sometimes," she said.

"You're fond of walking?"

"Yes, when I'm not too tired."

"Miss Sprunt, would--would you walk with me this evening? I know a quiet little place where we could dine together."

"Oh," she said, "I--I already have an engagement. I--"

She colored with surprise.

"You have an engagement?" His tones were suddenly flat.

"No," she replied, in tones of sudden decision, "I'd be pleased to go with you. I can do what I planned to-night any other time."

"Thank you, Miss Sprunt."

Her fingers trembled as she worked, and his suddenly closed over them.

"You poor, tired little girl," he repeated.

She gulped down her emotions.

"Miss Sprunt, this is neither the time nor the place for me to express myself, yet somehow our great moments come when we least expect them."