“Don't forget us down here in the sand, will you?” he suggested to Miss Fosdick. It was Jane Kelsey who answered.
“Oh, she won't forget,” returned that young lady. “Why she has your photograph to remember you by.”
Madeline colored becomingly and was, as Jane described it, “awfully fussed.”
“Nonsense!” she exclaimed, with much indignation, “I haven't any such thing. You know I haven't, Jane.”
“Yes, you have, my dear. You have a photograph of him standing in front of the drug store and looking dreamily in at--at the strawberry sundaes. It is a most romantic pose, really.”
Albert laughed. He remembered the photograph. It was one of a series of snapshots taken with Miss Kelsey's camera one Saturday afternoon when a party of young people had met in front of the sundae dispensary. Jane had insisted on “snapping” everyone.
“That reminds me that I have never seen the rest of those photographs,” he said.
“Haven't you?” exclaimed Jane. “Well, you ought to see them. I have Madeline's with me. It is a dream, if I do say it as I took it.”
She produced the snapshot, which showed her friend standing beside the silver-leaf tree before the druggist's window and smiling at the camera. It was a good likeness and, consequently, a very pretty picture.
“Isn't it a dream, just as I said?” demanded the artist. “Honest now, isn't it?”
Albert of course declared it to be beyond praise.
“May I have this one?” he asked, on the impulse of the moment.
“Don't ask me, stupid,” commanded Jane, mischievously. “It isn't my funeral--or my portrait, either.”
“May I?” he repeated, turning to Madeline. She hesitated.
“Why--why yes, you may, if you care for it,” she said. “That particular one is Jane's, anyway, and if she chooses to give it away I don't see how I can prevent her. But why you should want the old thing I can't conceive. I look as stiff and wooden as a sign-post.”
“Fibs, fibs, fibs,” she observed. “Can't conceive why he should want it! As if you weren't perfectly aware that he will wear it next his heart and--Oh, don't put it in THAT pocket! I said next your heart, and that isn't on your RIGHT side.”
Albert took the photograph home and stuck it between the frame and glass of his bureau. Then came a sudden remembrance of his parting with Helen and with it a twinge of conscience. He had begged her to have nothing to do with any other fellow. True she had refused to promise and consequently he also was unbound, but that made no difference--should not make any. So he put the photograph at the back of the drawer where he kept his collars and ties, with a resolve never to look at it. He did not look at it--very often.