Her laugh had an October tang of bitterness in it.
“Well, I’ll—say, what do you know about that!” he said, weakly.
“Tell me about yourself—since apparently we’re now acquainted…. Unless you want to go to that music-hall?”
“Oh no, no, no! Gee, I was just _crazy_ to have somebody to talk to—somebody nice—I was just about nutty, I was so lonely,” all in a burst. He finished, hesitatingly, “I guess the English are kinda hard to get acquainted with.”
“Lonely, eh?” she mused, abrupt and bluffly kind as a man, for all her modulating woman’s voice. “You don’t know any of the people here in the house?”
“No’m. Say, I guess we got rooms next to each other.”
“Wrenn’s my name; William Wrenn. I work for—I used to work for the Souvenir and Art Novelty Company. In New York.”
“Oh. I see. Novelties? Nice little ash-trays with ‘Love from the Erie Station’? And woggly pin-cushions?”
“Oh no-o-o! Please not black! Pale sympathetic blue eyes—nice honest blue eyes!”
“Nope. Black. Awful black…. Say, gee, I ain’t talking too nutty, am I?”
“‘Nutty’? You mean ‘idiotically’? The slang’s changed since—Oh yes, of course; you’ve succeeded in talking quite nice and ‘idiotic.’”
“Oh, say, gee, I didn’t mean to—When you been so nice and all to me—”
“Don’t apologize!” Istra Nash demanded, savagely. “Haven’t they taught you that?”
She sat silent again, apparently not at all satisfied with the architecture of the opposite side of Tavistock Place. Diffidently he edged into speech:
“Honest, I did think you was English. You came from California? Oh, say, I wonder if you’ve ever heard of Dr. Mittyford. He’s some kind of school-teacher. I think he teaches in Leland Stamford College.”
“Leland Stanford? You know him?” She dropped into interested familiarity.
“Really?… My brother was at Stanford. I think I’ve heard him speak of—Oh yes. He said that Mittyford was a cultural climber, if you know what I mean; rather—oh, how shall I express it?—oh, shall we put it, finicky about things people have just told him to be finicky about.”
To the luxury of feeling that he knew the unusual Miss Istra Nash he sacrificed Dr. Mittyford, scholarship and eye-glasses and Shelley and all, without mercy.
“Yes, he was awfully funny. Gee! I didn’t care much for him.”