Part 25

"I remember a funny old man you lived with, when I first knew you. Wasn't he a relative?"

"No, he found me some place. What's the difference? Do you care?"

"No, I'm glad. I am sure I couldn't abide 'in-laws.'"

Over the luncheon table he suddenly looked at her, as if for the first time. He noticed that all the eyes in the crowded diner were upon her.

"What's the matter?" she asked, intercepting his glance.

"Do people always stare at you?" he inquired.

She swept the car with an indifferent glance.

"I don't know. I never noticed."

"It's queer for us to be going off like this," he said, in a startled tone.

"It seems perfectly natural to me. Are you embarrassed?" she asked, suddenly aware of a new quality in him.

"No, certainly not," he defended himself.

It was five o'clock when they drew into Grand Central Station, a time when the whole duty of man seems to be to get out of New York and into the suburbs. An army of ants ran through the great blue-vaulted rotunda, streaming into the narrow tunnels, where the steel horses were puffing and steaming. The sense of rushing waters was upon Jarvis. He halted, stunned and helpless.

"Isn't it great? All the tribes of Shem, Ham, and Japhet," cried Bambi, at his elbow. She piloted him through--big, powerful, bewildered Jarvis. Many a hurrying suburbanite slowed up enough to look after them, the tall, blond giant, and a little girl with shining eyes.

"Where are we going?" Jarvis asked, with child-like confidence that she would know.

"Gramercy Park. We'll put up at a club. We'll act rich and take a taxi."

She ordered the driver to go down the avenue slowly, and as he jolted around the crowded corner of Forty-second Street, on to the smooth asphalt, Bambi leaned forward eagerly.

"Good evening, home of the books," she nodded to the Library. "Good evening, Mrs. New York, and all you people there! We're here, Jarvis and I."

She turned and caught his rare smile.

"You're happy, aren't you?" he remarked.

"Perfectly. I feel as if I were breathing electricity. Don't you like all these people?"

"No, I feel that there are too many of them. There should be half as many, and better done. Until we learn not to breed like rabbits, we will never accomplish a creditable race."

"Such good-looking rabbits though, Jarvis."

"Yes. Sleek and empty-headed."

"All hopping uptown, to nibble something," she chuckled.

"Life is such foolishness," he said, in disgust.

"Oh, no. Life is such ecstasy," she threw back at him, as the cab drew up to the clubhouse door.

Bambi was out of bed and at her window the next morning early. Her room faced on Gramercy Park, and the early morning sun fell across the little square so sacred to the memory of past glories, and bathed the trees in their new green drapery with a soft, impressionistic colour. Her eyes swept around the square, hastening over the great white apartment buildings, our modern atrocities, to linger over the old houses, which her swift imagination peopled with the fashion and pomp of another day.

"Spring in the city!" breathed Bambi. "Spring in New York!"