"You'd get more salary there, and be able to live cheaper?" Peter wished to know.
"Oh, yes." The implication of her tone was that she didn't see what that had to do with it. It was toward the end of June, and she was looking very pretty in a white dress and a hat that set off her pompadour to advantage, and there was no special reason, as they had the afternoon before them, why they should not have taken some of the by-paths that the girl perceived to lead out from the subject into breathless wonder. She had ways, which were maidenly and good, of opening up to Peter comfortable little garden plots of existence which, though they lay far this side of the House and the Lovely Lady, had in the monotony of the long climb up the scale of Siegel Brothers, moments of importunate invitation.
"And you came up to the city," Peter went on in the gravelled walk of fact, "just to improve yourself in shorthand so you could get such a situation? I don't see why you hesitate."
Miss Havens could hardly say why herself.
"There were so many ways of bettering one's self in the city. I've a great many friends here," she hinted.
"Not so many," Peter reminded her, "as you'd have where you were brought up."
"You are staying in the city?" Miss Havens suggested.
"That's different. I have to." He had already told her about Ellen and also about his mother.
"And are you always going to stay on here like this, working and working and never taking any time for yourself? Aren't you ever going to ... marry?"
"I know too much what poverty is like to ask any woman to share it," Peter protested.
"I don't see why ... if some girl ... cared ... and if she saw ... anybody struggling along under burdens she would be glad to share, and she knew because of that he didn't mean to ask her ... You think she ought not to let him know?"
"I think it wouldn't be best," said Peter.
"Not that; but if he liked her a little ... he might consent to it ... just because he liked her and was tired maybe ... and that wouldn't be good for either of them."
"Well, anyway, it doesn't concern either of us," said Miss Havens.
The next evening as Peter was letting himself in at his own door--he had moved to the second floor front by this time--Mrs. Blodgett stopped him.