A Poor Wise Man
I come in a business suit?""Why, of course. Why not?""I didn't know," said Willy Cameron. "I didn't know what your people would think. That's all. To-morrow at eight, then. Thanks."He hung up the receiver and walked to the door, where he stood looking out and seeing nothing. She had not forgotten. He was going to see her. Instead of standing across the street by the park fence, waiting for a glimpse of her which never came, he was to sit in the room with her. There would be--eight from eleven was three--three hours of her.What a wonderful day it was! Spring was surely near. He would like to be able to go and pick up Jinx, and then take a long walk through the park. He needed movement. He needed to walk off his excitement or he felt that he might burst with it."Eight o'clock!" said Edith. "I wish you joy, waiting until eight for supper."He had to come back a long, long way to her."'May I come in a business suit?'" she mimicked him. "My evening clothes have not arrived yet. My valet's bringing them up to town to-morrow."Even through the radiant happiness that surrounded him like a mist, he caught the bitterness under her raillery. It puzzled him."It's a young lady I knew at camp. I was in an army camp, you know.""Is her name a secret?""Why, no. It is Cardew. Miss Lily Cardew.""I believe you--not.""But it is," he said, genuinely concerned. "Why in the world should I give you a wrong name?"Her eyes were fixed on his face."No. You wouldn't. But it makes me laugh, because--well, it was crazy, anyhow.""What was crazy?""Something I had in my mind. Just forget it. I'll tell you what will happen, Mr. Cameron. You'll stay here about six weeks. Then you'll get a job at the Cardew Mills. They use chemists there, and you will be--"She lifted her finger-tips and blew along them delicately."Gone--like that," she finished.Sometimes Willy Cameron wondered about Miss Boyd. The large young man, for instance, whose name he had learned was Louis Akers, did not come anymore. Not since that telephone conversation. But he had been distinctly a grade above that competent young person, Edith Boyd, if there were such grades these days; fluent and prosperous-looking, and probably able to offer a girl a good home. But she had thrown him over. He had heard her doing it, and when he had once ventured to ask her about Akers she had cut him off curtly."I was sick to death of him. That's all," she had said.But on the night of Lily's invitation he was to hear more of Louis Akers.It was his evening in the shop. One day he came on at seven-thirty in the morning and was off at six, and the next he came at ten and stayed until eleven at night. The evening business was oddly increasing. Men wandered in, bought a tube of shaving cream or a toothbrush, and sat or stood around for an hour 
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