第189章

"Ain't she a looker?" Tembarom said of Lady Joan."And ain't Jem a looker, too? Gee! they're a pair.Jem thinks this honeymoon stunt of ours is the best thing he ever heard of-- us fixing ourselves up here just like we would have done if nothing had ever happened, and we'd HAD to do it on fifteen per.Say," throwing an arm about her, "are you getting as much fun out of it as if we HAD to, as if I might lose my job any minute, and we might get fired out of here because we couldn't pay the rent? I believe you'd rather like to think I might ring you into some sort of trouble, so that you could help me to get you out of it."That's nonsense," she answered, with a sweet, untruthful little face.

"I shouldn't be very sensible if I wasn't glad you COULDN'T lose your job.Father and I are your job now."He laughed aloud.This was the innocent, fantastic truth of it.They had chosen to do this thing--to spend their honey-moon in this particular way, and there was no reason why they should not.The little dream which had been of such unattainable proportions in the days of Mrs.Bowse's boarding-house could be realized to its fullest.

No one in the St.Francesca apartments knew that the young honey-mooners in the five-roomed apartment were other than Mr.and Mrs.T.

Barholm, as recorded on the tablet of names in the entrance.

Hutchinson knew, and Miss Alicia knew, and Jem Temple Barholm, and Lady Joan.The Duke of Stone knew, and thought the old-fashionedness of the idea quite the last touch of modernity.

"Did you see any one who knew you when you were out?" Little Ann asked.

"No, and if I had they wouldn't have believed they'd seen me, because the papers told them that Mr.and Mrs.Temple Barholm are spending their honeymoon motoring through Spain in their ninety-horse-power Panhard.""Let's go and get dinner," said Little Ann.

They went into the doll's-house kitchen and cooked the dinner.Little Ann broiled steak and fried potato chips, and T.Tembarom produced a wonderful custard pie he had bought at a confectioner's.He set the table, and put a bunch of yellow daisies in the middle of it.

"We couldn't do it every day on fifteen per week," he said."If we wanted flowers we should have to grow them in old tomato-cans."Little Ann took off her chorister's-gown apron and her kerchief, and patted and touched up her hair.She was pink to her ears, and had several new dimples; and when she sat down opposite him, as she had sat that first night at Mrs.Bowse's boarding-house supper, Tembarom stared at her and caught his breath.

"You ARE there?" he said, "ain't you?"

"Yes, I am," she answered.

When they had cleared the table and washed the dishes, and had left the toy kitchen spick and span, the ten million lights in New York were lighted and casting their glow above the city.Tembarom sat down on the Adams chair before the window and took Little Ann on his knee.

She was of the build which settles comfortably and with ease into soft curves whose nearness is a caress.Looked down at from the fourteenth story of the St.Francesca apartments, the lights strung themselves along lines of streets, crossing and recrossing one another; they glowed and blazed against masses of buildings, and they hung at enormous heights in mid-air here and there, apparently without any support.Everywhere was the glow and dazzle of their brilliancy of light, with the distant bee hum of a nearing elevated train, at intervals gradually deepening into a roar.The river looked miles below them, and craft with sparks or blaze of light went slowly or swiftly to and fro.

"It's like a dream," said Little Ann, after a long silence."And we are up here like birds in a nest."He gave her a closer grip.

"Miss Alicia once said that when I was almost down and out," he said.

"It gave me a jolt.She said a place like this would be like a nest.

Wherever we go,--and we'll have to go to lots of places and live in lots of different ways,--we'll keep this place, and some time we'll bring her here and let her try it.I've just got to show her New York.""Yes, let us keep it," said Little Ann, drowsily, "just for a nest."There was another silence, and the lights on the river far below still twinkled or blazed as they drifted to and fro.

"You are there, ain't you?" said Tembarom in a half-whisper.

"Yes--I am," murmured Little Ann.

But she had had a busy day, and when he looked down at her, she hung softly against his shoulder, fast asleep.

End