Part 57

"I'll find out," she said.

She rang for the maid and gave her an order.

"Was it a valuable paper?" she asked.

"Not--very," I stammered. My tongue was thick with hope and dread. "Just--my notes, you know, but I do need them. I couldn't carry the baby easily, so I pinned them on her skirt, thinking--thinking--"

The maid came in and dumped a little heap of white before me. I fell on my knees.

Oh, yes, I prayed all right, but I searched, too. And there it was.

What I said to that woman I don't know even now. I flew out through the hall and down the steps and--

And there Kitty Wilson corralled me.

"Say, where's that stick-pin?" she cried.

"Here!--here, you darling!" I said, pressing it into her hand. "And, Kitty, whenever you feel like swiping another purse--just don't do it. It doesn't pay. Just you come down to the Vaudeville and ask for Nance Olden some day, and I'll tell you why."

"Gee!" said Kitty, impressed. "Shall--shall I call ye a hansom, lady?"

Should she! The blessed inspiration of her!

I got into the wagon and we drove down street--to the Vaudeville.

I burst in past the stage doorkeeper, amazed to see me, and rushed into Fred Obermuller's office.

"There!" I cried, throwing that awful paper on the desk before him. "Now cinch 'em, Fred Obermuller, as they cinched you. It'll be the holiest blackmail that ever--oh, and will you pay for the hansom?"

XVI.

I don't remember much about the first part of the lunch. I was so hungry I wanted to eat everything in sight, and so happy that I couldn't eat a thing.

But Mr. O. kept piling the things on my plate, and each time I began to talk he'd say: "Not now--wait till you're rested, and not quite so famished."

I laughed.

"Do I eat as though I was starved?"

"You--you look tired, Nance."

"Well," I said slowly, "it's been a hard week."

"It's been hard for me, too; harder, I think, than for you. It wasn't fair to me to let me--think what I did and say what I did. I'm so sorry, Nance,--and ashamed. So ashamed! You might have told me."

"And have you put your foot down on the whole thing; not much!"

He laughed. He's got such a boyish laugh in spite of his chin and his eye-glasses and the bigness of him. He filled my glass for me and helped me again to the salad.

Oh, Mag, it's such fun to be a woman and have a man wait on you like that! It's such fun to be hungry and to sit down to a jolly little table just big enough for two, with carnations nodding in the tall slim vase, with a fat, soft-footed, quick-handed waiter dancing behind you, and something tempting in every dish your eye falls on.

It's a gay, happy, easy world, Maggie darlin'. I vow I can't find a dark corner in it--not to-day.

None but the swellest place in town was good enough, Obermuller had said, for us to celebrate in. The waiters looked queerly at us when we came in--me in my dusty shoes and mussed hair and old rig, and Mr. O. in his working togs. But do you suppose we cared?