He stooped and kissed her and, taking her hand, they sat side by side on the sofa together in the manner of all conventional lovers. Virginia, who had watched them with amusement, shook her head. Sadly she said:
"My heart never said anything like _that_ to _me_."
"Then perhaps it won't be that way with you," said Jimmie. "Perhaps you'll learn to care for him by degrees like you would--say, for Mr. Stafford."
"He's interested in you, and if you play your cards right--"
"Let me tell you one thing," he said, rising and going to the table, "a chance like this don't come to one girl in a million."
"Please!--" exclaimed Virginia, putting up her hand to stop his talk.
But Jimmie was not so easily suppressed. Earnestly he went on:
"It's a chance of a life time. It means a lot to me and Fanny too."
"Yes, that's true," chimed in his fiancée.
Virginia turned and looked at her sister.
Jimmie, as usual, replied for his slower-witted partner:
"Do you think," he said, "I want to be a shipping clerk all my life? Well, I don't. I've got ambitions. Yes, and I've got the ability. All I need is a chance and I'd be one of 'em, too."
"A captain of industry, a magnate, a financier."
"He could do it," exclaimed Fanny admiringly.
"You bet I could," he said positively. Turning to Virginia, he went on: "And if you married Mr. Stafford and he gave me a chance, which as his brother-in-law he certainly would--well, if I ever got a flying start I'd show 'em a few things. I've got ability, I have."
"Why don't you prove it by getting eighteen dollars a week?" retorted Virginia sarcastically.
Turning her back on him, she walked away and took a seat near the window, where she could look out on the street. But he followed her:
"I thought you'd say something like that," he said. "It just shows how much you know."
"Explain it to her, Jimmy," exclaimed Fanny.
"What's the good?" he replied scornfully. "She wouldn't understand. But I will say this: If I had an opportunity to show some rich man just what I could do, I'd be worth perhaps a million dollars in ten or twelve years, and that would mean a swell house for you and me, and servants, and automobiles and everything like that. I'd show 'em!"
Overcome by the vivid picture he had drawn, Fanny took his hands. Enthusiastically she cried: