“Ah,” she said, smiling back at him.
“I don’t know; that’s a hard question
to answer. I’ve never asked myself
that question.”
“Well, I’m saving you the trouble, you
see,” he answered, still smiling. “I
am asking it for you.”
“But I don’t want to answer such a question
off-hand like that; how can I tell? It would
only be perhaps, just now.”
Young Haight answered quickly that “just now”
he would be contented with that “perhaps”;
but Turner did not hear this. She had spoken at
the same time as he, exclaiming, “But what is
the good of talking of that? Because no matter
what happened I feel as though I could not break my
promise to Van, even if I should want to. Because
I have talked like this, Dolly,” she went on
more seriously, “you must not be deceived or
get a wrong impression. You understand how things
are, don’t you?”
“Oh, yes,” he answered, still trying to
carry it off with a laugh. “I know, I know.
But now I hope you won’t let anything I have
said bother you, and that things will go on just as
if I hadn’t spoken, just as if nothing had happened.”
“Why, of course,” she said, laughing with
him again. “Of course, why shouldn’t
they?”
They were both at their ease again by the time young
Haight stood at the door with his hat in his hand
ready to go.
He raised his free hand over her head, and said, with
burlesque, dramatic effect, trying to keep down a
smile:
“Bless you both; go, go marry Vandover and be
happy; I forgive you.”
“Ah—don’t be so utterly
absurd,” she cried, beginning to laugh.
On a certain evening about four months later Ellis
and Vandover had a “date” with Ida Wade
and Bessie Laguna at the Mechanics’ Fair.
Ellis, Bessie, and Ida were to meet Vandover there
in the Art Gallery, as he had to make a call with
his father, and could not get there until half-past
nine. They were all to walk about the Fair until
ten, after which the two men proposed to take the
girls out to the Cliff House in separate coupes.
The whole thing had been arranged by Ellis and Bessie,
and Vandover was irritated. Ellis ought to have
had more sense; rushing the girls was all very well,
but everybody went to the Mechanics’ Fair, and
he didn’t like to have nice girls like Turner
or Henrietta Vance see him with chippies like that.
It was all very well for Ellis, who had no social
position, but for him, Vandover, it would look
too confounded queer. Of course he was in for
it now, and would have to face the music. You
can’t tell a girl like that that you’re
ashamed to be seen with her, but very likely he would
get himself into a regular box with it all.
When he arrived at the Mechanics’ Pavilion,
it was about twenty minutes of ten, and as he pushed
through the wicket he let himself into a huge amphitheatre
full of colour and movement.
