Part 8 (1/2)
”We had better follow.”
She corrected his number. ”Yes, I had better. Thank you so much for your help.” She took a step; faltered upon it with a little exclamation of pain; put a white tooth on her lip.
”You have hurt your foot?” George said.
”My ankle, I think. Oh dear!” and then again she laughed.
It came even then to George that certainly she would have made her fortune were she to set up a gloom-exorcising bureau--waiting at the end of a telephone wire ready to rush with that laugh to banish the imps of melancholy. Never had he heard so infectious a note of mirth.
”Oh, what must you think of me?” she ended. ”I simply cannot help laughing, you know--and yet, oh dear!”
She put the tips of the fingers of a hand against her lower lip, gazed very anxiously up the road, and then again she gave that clear pipe of laughter.
”I can't help it,” she told him imploringly. ”I simply cannot help laughing. It is funny, you know. She was scolding me--”
”_Scolding_!” George exclaimed.
That beauty should be scolded!
”Scolding--yes. Oh, I'm only a--well, scolding me, and I was wis.h.i.+ng, _wis.h.i.+ng_ I could escape. And then suddenly out I shot. And then I look around and she's--” A wave of her hand expressed a disappearance that was by magic agency.
”But, _scolding_?” George said. ”Need you trouble? She will be all right.”
”Oh, I must. I live with her.”
”Will she trouble about you?”
”I think she will return for me. Please, _please_ go--would you mind?-- to the corner, and see if there has been an accident.”
From that direction a bicyclist approached. George hailed. ”Is there a cab accident round the corner?”
The youth stared; called ”Rats!”; pa.s.sed.
George interpreted: ”It means No. Do you think if you were to take my arm you could walk to the turning?”
Quite naturally she slipped a white glove around his elbow. The contact thrilled him. ”No nice girl, you know, would do this,” she said, ”with a perfect stranger.”
George bent his arm a little, the better to feel the pressure of those white fingers. ”I am not really perfect,” he told her.
She took his mood. ”Nor I really nice,” she joined. ”In fact, I'm horrible--they tell me. But I think it is wise to follow, don't you?”
”Profoundly wise. Who says you are horrible?”
She gave no answer. Glancing, he saw trouble shade her eyes, tremble her lips.
That beauty should know distress!
Very slightly he raised his forearm so that the lock of his elbow felt her hand. He had no fine words. This George was no hero with exquisite ways. He was a most average young man, and nothing could he find but most painfully average words.
”I say, what's up?” he asked.