“I'll speak to the superintendent about you,” he said. “Perhaps you'd like me to show you around a little.”
“When? To-day?”
He had meant in a month, or a year. It was quite a minute before he replied:—
“Yes, to-day, if you say. I'm operating at four. How about three o'clock?”
She held out both hands, and he took them, smiling.
“You are the kindest person I ever met.”
“And—perhaps you'd better not say you are applying until we find out if there is a vacancy.”
“May I tell one person?”
“Mother?”
“No. We—we have a roomer now. He is very much interested. I should like to tell him.”
He dropped her hands and looked at her in mock severity.
“Much interested! Is he in love with you?”
“Mercy, no!”
“I don't believe it. I'm jealous. You know, I've always been more than half in love with you myself!”
Play for him—the same victorious instinct that had made him touch Miss Harrison's fingers as she gave him the instrument. And Sidney knew how it was meant; she smiled into his eyes and drew down her veil briskly.
“Then we'll say at three,” she said calmly, and took an orderly and unflurried departure.
But the little seed of tenderness had taken root. Sidney, passing in the last week or two from girlhood to womanhood,—outgrowing Joe, had she only known it, as she had outgrown the Street,—had come that day into her first contact with a man of the world. True, there was K. Le Moyne. But K. was now of the Street, of that small world of one dimension that she was leaving behind her.
She sent him a
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