“There is a young girl over there who cannot walk. Will you lift her out of her chair and bring her in? It is just at the door, and she is very light.”
“Busy now, miss! Better ask somebody else!” pushing past.
The baffled applicant stood in the middle of the floor, irresolute, seeming the more solitary and helpless because young and a woman. Thus much, and not that she was comely and a lady, March saw before he sprang to his feet and faced her respectfully.
“I beg pardon! but can I be of use? It will give me pleasure if you will allow me.” Catching sight in the doorway of the one in whose behalf she had spoken, an arch smile—respectful still—lighted up his honest countenance. “If you will let me make amends for my awkwardness of a while ago!”
He was a society man, and might have been aware how unconventional was the offer. He palliated the solecism, in describing the incident at home, by saying that he saw in every elderly woman his mother, in a young one, his only sister.
“Thank you! if you will be so kind”—accepting the proposal as simply as it had been made. “I could bring her in myself, but she does not like to have me do it here.”
“I should think not, indeed! One of the best uses to which a man’s muscles can be put is to help the weak,” rejoined March heartily.
A gleam crossed the unchildish visage of the cripple when he stooped to lift her. She recognized him, but offered no verbal remark then, or when he deposited the light burden in the chair set for her by a waiter more humane, or less driven than his testy comrade.
“You are very good, and we are much obliged to you,” the guardian said, with a little bow of acknowledgment which he took as dismissal also, withdrawing to his own place.
“Set the table for seven, please,” he heard her continue to the waiter, businesslike and quiet, “and reserve another seat at that table”—designating one remote from the larger—“for a gentleman who will come in by and by. There is a man, too, for whom I wish to order luncheon at the counter in that room. He can get a good meal and be comfortable there, I suppose?”
“A traveling party of nine!” thought March, apparently intent upon the depths of his soup tureen. “With this girl as courier. Yet she mentioned two men!”