Part 10 (1/2)

”Well, there's none of them as rich as you are, I reckon, Dan.”

And the boy turned on him violently.

”See here, Josh, if you speak to me again of my money, when there's a woman in the question-”

He did not finish his threat, but s.n.a.t.c.hed up his coat and hat and gloves and went out of the door, slamming it after him.

Mr. Ruggles' profound and happy snore was cut short by the page boy, who fetched in a note, with the Savoy stamping on the back. Ruggles opened it not without emotion.

”Dear boy,” it ran, ”I haven't yet thanked you for the primroses; they were perfectly sweet. There is not one of them in any of my rooms, and I'll tell you why to-night. I am crazy to accept for supper”-here she had evidently struck out her intended refusal, and closed with, ”I'm coming, but don't come after me at the Gaiety, please. I'll meet you at the Carlton after the theater. Who's the other boy? L. L.”

The ”other boy” read the note with much difficulty, for it was badly written. ”He'll have to stop sending her flowers and going every night to the theater unless he wants a row with the d.u.c.h.ess,” he said dryly.

And with a certain interest in his role, Ruggles rang for the head waiter, and with the man's help ordered his first midnight supper for an actress.

CHAPTER XI-RUGGLES GIVES A DINNER

The bright tide of worldly London flows after and around midnight into the various restaurants and supper rooms, and as well through the corridors and halls of the Carlton. At one of the small tables bearing a great expensive bunch of orchids and soft ferns, Josh Ruggles, in a new evening dress, sat waiting for his party. Dan had dined with Lord Galorey, and the two men had gone out together afterward, and Ruggles had not seen the boy to give him Letty Lane's note.

”Got it with you?” Blair asked when he came in, and Ruggles responded that he didn't carry love letters around in his dress clothes.

They could tell by the interest in the room when the actress was coming, and both men rose as Letty Lane floated in at flood tide with a crowd of last arrivals.

She had not dressed this evening with the intention that her dark simplicity of attire should be conspicuous. The cloak which Dan took from her shed the perfume of orris and revealed the woman in a blaze of sparkling _paillettes_. She seemed made out of sparkle, and her blond head, from which a bright ornament shook, was the most brilliant thing about her, though her dress from hem to throat glistened with discs of gold like moons.h.i.+ne on a starry sea. The actress' look of surprise when she saw Ruggles indicated that she had not expected a boy of his age.

”The other boy?” she asked. ”Well, this is the nicest supper party ever!

And you are awfully good to invite me.”

Ruggles patted his s.h.i.+rt front and adjusted his cravat.

”My idea,” he told her, ”all the blame on me, Miss Lane. Charge it up to me! Dan here had cold feet from the first. He said you wouldn't come.”

She laughed deliciously.

”He did? Hasn't got much faith, has he?”

Miss Lane drew her long gloves off, touched the orchids with her little hands, on which the ever present rings flashed, and went on talking to Ruggles, to whom she seemed to want to address her conversation.

”I'm simply crazy over these flowers.”

The older man showed his pleasure. ”My choice again! Walked up myself and chose the bunch, blame me again; ditto dinner; mine from start to finish-hope you'll like it. I would have added some Montana peas and some chocolate soda-water, only I thought you might not understand the joke.”

Miss Lane beamed on him. Although he was unconscious of it, she was not fully at ease: he was not the kind of man she had expected to see.

Accustomed to young fellows like the boy and their mad devotion, accustomed to men with whom she could be herself, the big, bluff, middle-aged gentleman with his painfully correct tie, his rumpled iron-gray hair, and his deference to her, though an unusual diversion, was a little embarra.s.sing.

”Oh, I know your dinner is ripping, Mr. Ruggles. I'm on a diet of milk and eggs myself, and I expect your order didn't take in those.” But at his fallen countenance she hurried to say: ”Oh, I wouldn't have told you that if I hadn't been intending to break through.”

And with childlike antic.i.p.ation she clapped her hands and said: ”We're going to have 'lots of fun.' Just think, they don't know what that means here in London. They say 'heaps of sport, you know.'” She imitated the accent maliciously. ”It's just we Americans who know what 'lots of fun'