“I’ll gamble on you once, Billee. At twelve my card goes in—for your sake. At twelve one I come out, for my own,” he laughed.

“You promise? King, I am really very superstitious.”

“So am I—about you.”

At twelve o’clock next day King handed his card to the red-headed outer guard at Banker Throckmorton’s office. To his everlasting astonishment, the boy smiled genially.

“Come in, Mr. Dubignon,” he said. And by the inner guard and the extreme inner guard and the secretary entanglements, King marched straight into the august Presence. All roads led to Rome. Ten minutes later he came out, his head in the clouds. His cherished plans for a thirty-five story office building were behind him. Billee’s eyes danced when he told her the story.

But he went no more. The banker had promised to send for him when he got a report on the plans from older architects. He did not send, and Billee was away in Boston with that restless old woman. What the devil did she want to be prancing around the country for at her age? Meaning the old woman, of course.

Hope began to shrivel. The office building grew smaller. It lost a story a day for thirty-five days. Nothing but the cellar, a hole in the ground, was left. He laid himself down in that and pulled the hole in.

And the green grass grew all around.

Then Billee came back with a rush, and things began to move. Fate had completed her gambit. She pushed a queen. The queen was Billee, of course.

A wonderful day was at hand, for King.

 Chapter VII

Chapter VII

THE wonderful day, the day for memory, was that on which King took Billee to Coney Island. June had arrived with white dresses, canvas shoes, Palm Beach suits, straw hats and sea yearnings. Billee had telephoned him from somewhere to meet her at Bowling Green at eleven. They would take cars to the Island and come back by boat at ten to Battery Park. Her old lady was off to New England again with the Plymouth Rockers, celebrating an anniversary, and would not return until next day. Her friend, the housemaid, would sit up for her, and the subway wasn’t far. And be sure and meet her or she would die of disappointment; she had never 

 Prev. P 27/39 next