And when the white-waistcoated, white-side-burned old man had, chuckling, left the room, William would slowly lift his arms; but Lola would move back from him a step--only a step--and after laying a finger archly upon her lips to check him, “Wait, sir!” she would say. “I have a question to ask you, sir!”
“THIS question, sir!” she would reply. “In all that summer, sir, so long ago, why did you never tell me what you WERE, until I had gone away and it was too late to show you what I felt? Ah, Ickle Boy Baxter, I never understood until I looked back upon it all, after I had read 'In Dream,' on the train that day! THEN I KNEW!” “And now, Lola?” William would say. “Do you understand me, NOW?”
Shyly she would advance the one short step she had put between them, while he, with lifted, yearning arms, this time destined to no disappointment----
At so vital a moment did Mrs. Baxter knock at his door and consoling reverie cease to minister unto William. Out of the rosy sky he dropped, falling miles in an instant, landing with a bump. He started, placed the sacred box out of sight, and spoke gruffly.
“I'm not coming in, Willie,” said his mother. “I just wanted to know--I thought maybe you were looking out of the window and noticed where those children went.”
“Jane and that little girl from across the street--Kirsted, her name must be.”
“I just wondered,” Mrs. Baxter said, timidly. “Genesis thinks he heard the little Kirsted girl telling Jane she had plenty of money for carfare. He thinks they went somewhere on a street-car. I thought maybe you noticed wheth--”
“All right,” she said, placatively. “I didn't mean to bother you, dear.”
Following this there was a silence; but no sound of receding footsteps indicated Mrs. Baxter's departure from the other side of the closed door.
“Nothing--nothing at all,” said the compassionate voice. “I just thought I'd have lunch a little later than usual; not till half past one. That is if--well, I thought probably you meant to go to the station to see Miss Pratt off on the one-o'clock train.”
Even so friendly an interest as this must have appeared to the quivering William an intrusion in his affairs, for he demanded, sharply:
“How'd you find out she's going at one o'clock?”