"What do I care? Gee, this is luck! You ought to see my new racer, a regular peach! Will you come out with me sometime?"
"I'll let you do anything you like with anything I've got," he declared with such ardor that she laughed and regretted it the next moment.
"Now look here, Mr. Mac!" she said, severely, "you touch me again, and I quit to-night. See?"
"I'll be good. I'll do anything you say if you'll just stay and play with me."
"Work be hanged! Do you suppose when I haven't seen you for four months that I'm not going to claim my inning?"
"Well, I want to tell you right here," she said, shaking a warning pencil in his face, "that I mean what I say about your behaving yourself."
Mac caught the end of the pencil and held it while their eyes challenged each other.
"So be it!" he said. "I promise to be a model of discretion. Nance, I've been mad about you! Did Monte tell you--"
"Mr. Monte didn't tell me anything I wanted to hear," she said in her cool, keen way, as she got the imperiled ink-well to a place of safety, and straightened the other articles on the desk.
"You wouldn't be so down on a fellow if you knew how hard hit I am," persisted Mac. "Besides, I'm in for an awful row with the governor. You may see my scalp fly past the window in less than ten minutes."
"Same old thing. I am the original devil for getting found out." For the space of a minute he gloomily contemplated a spot in the carpet; then he shrugged his shoulders, rammed his hands in his pockets, and began to whistle.
"The governor'll fork out," he said. "He always does. Say, Nance, you haven't said a word about my moustache."
"Let's see it," said Nance in giggling derision. "Looks like a baby's eyebrow. Does it wash off?"
A step in the hall sent them flying in opposite directions, Nance back to her desk, and Mac into the inner office, where his father found him a moment later, apparently absorbed in a pamphlet on factory inspection.
When Nance started home at six o'clock, she found Dan waiting at his old post beside the gas-pipe.
"It's like old times," he said happily, as he piloted her through the out-pouring throng. "I remember the first night we walked home together. You weren't much more than a kid. You had on a red cap with a tassel to it. Three years ago the tenth of last May. Wouldn't think it, would you?"