Chapter 15 - Page 2

a "cinch" the place would have been for him--good as the Astor Library! He hadn't a word to say against books,--good Lord! no;--but even if he'd had the education and the time to read, he didn't believe he was naturally that kind, anyhow. You had to be "that kind" to know about books. He didn't suppose she-- meaning Miss Alicia--was learned enough to make you throw a fit. She didn't look that way, and he was mighty glad of it, because perhaps she wouldn't like him much if she was. It would worry her when she tried to talk to him and found out he didn't know a darned thing he ought to.

They'd get on together easier if they could just chin about common sort of every-day things. But though she didn't look like the Vassar sort, he guessed that she was not like himself: she had lived in libraries before, and books didn't frighten her. She'd been born among people who read lots of them and maybe could talk about them. That was why she somehow seemed to fit into the room. He was aware that, timid as she was and shabby as her neat dress looked, she fitted into the whole place, as he did not. She'd been a poor relative and had been afraid to death of old Temple Barholm, but she'd not been afraid of him because she wasn't his sort. She was a lady; that was what was the matter with her. It was what made things harder for her, too. It was what made her voice tremble when she'd tried to seem so contented and polite when she'd talked about going into one of those "decayed alms- houses." As if the old ladies were vegetables that had gone wrong, by gee! he thought.

He liked her little, modest, delicate old face and her curls and her little cap with the ribbons so much that he smiled with a twinkling eye every time he looked at her. He wanted to suggest something he thought would be mighty comfortable, but he was half afraid he might be asking her to do something which wasn't "her job," and it might hurt her feelings. But he ventured to hint at it.

"Has Burrill got to come back and pour that out?" he asked, with an awkward gesture toward the tea-tray. "Has he just got to?"

"Oh, no, unless you wish it," she answered. "Shall--may I give it to you?"

"Will you?" he exclaimed delightedly. "That would be fine. I shall feel like a regular Clarence."

She was going to sit at the table in a straight-backed chair, but he sprang at her.

"This big one is more comfortable," he said, and he dragged it forward and made her sit in it. "You ought to have a footstool," he added, and he got one and put it under her feet. "There, that's all right."

A footstool, as though she were a royal personage and he were a gentleman in waiting, only probably gentlemen in waiting did not jump about and look so pleased. The cheerful content of his boyish face when he himself sat down near the table was delightful.

"Now," he said, "we can ring up for the first act."

She filled the tea-pot