Willy Cameron, retreating into his lair, was unhappily
conscious that the girl was on the verge of tears.
He puzzled over the situation for some time.
His immediate instinct was to help any troubled creature,
and it had dawned on him that this composed young
lady who manicured her nails out of a pasteboard box
during the slack portion of every day was troubled.
In his abstraction he commenced again his melancholy
refrain, and a moment later she appeared in the doorway:
“Oh, for mercy’s sake, stop,” she
said. She was very pale.
“Look here, Miss Edith, you come in here and
tell me what’s wrong. Here’s a chair.
Now sit down and talk it out. It helps a lot
to get things off your chest.”
“There’s nothing the matter with me.
And if the boss comes in here and finds me—”
Quite suddenly she put her head down on the back of
the chair and began to cry. He was frightfully
distressed. He poured some aromatic ammonia
into a medicine glass and picking up her limp hand,
closed her fingers around it.
“Drink that,” he ordered.
She shook her head.
“I’m not sick,” she said.
“I’m only a fool.”
“If that fellow said anything over the telephone—!”
She looked up drearily.
“It wasn’t him. He doesn’t
matter. It’s just—I got to hating
myself.” She stood up and carefully dabbed
her eyes. “Heavens, I must be a sight.
Now don’t you get to thinking things, Mr. Cameron.
Girls can’t go out and fight off a temper, or
get full and sleep it off. So they cry.”
Some time later he glanced out at her. She was
standing before the little mirror above the chewing
gum, carefully rubbing her cheeks with a small red
pad. After that she reached into the show case,
got out a lip pencil and touched her lips.
“You’re pretty enough without all that,
Miss Edith.”
“You mind your own business,” she retorted
acidly.
Lily had known Alston Denslow most of her life.
The children of that group of families which formed
the monied aristocracy of the city knew only their
own small circle. They met at dancing classes,
where governesses and occasionally mothers sat around
the walls, while the little girls, in handmade white
frocks of exquisite simplicity, their shining hair
drawn back and held by ribbon bows, made their prim
little dip at the door before entering, and the boys,
in white Eton collars and gleaming pumps, bowed from
the waist and then dived for the masculine corner
of the long room.
No little girl ever intruded on that corner, although
now and then a brave spirit among the boys would wander,
with assumed unconsciousness but ears rather pink,
to the opposite corner where the little girls were
grouped like white butterflies milling in the sun.
