He snorted. 'Then that is the second order of business; the first is to get you away from here. Go upstairs and pack your things; I'm not leaving you here to be jeered at by tradesmen a moment longer.'
'But-' she protested, knowing his own resources were slender. He cut her off at the single word, showing an unexpected streak of authority.
'I can certainly afford to put the daughter of my old friend up in a respectable boarding-house for a few days, and take her to dinner too. And as for the rest well, that was what I came here to speak to you about, and that would be best done over dinner, or rather, dessert. Now, don't argue with me, child!' he scolded. 'I won't have you staying here! The next thing you know, they'll probably cut off the gas.'
At just that moment, the gaslights flickered and went out, all over the house, leaving them in the grey gloom of the overcast day, the uncertain and haunted hour before sunset. Suddenly, the house seemed full of ghosts. If nothing else, that decided her.
'I'll just be a moment,' she said, truthfully, since most of her belongings were already packed into a carpetbag and a single trunk, with only a valise waiting to receive the rest. Mr. Grumwelt had watched her with his nasty, beady eyes, like a serpent watching a bird, the entire time she packed; presumably to make sure that she did not pack up something that no longer belonged to her. Fortunately he did not recognize the value of some of the keepsakes she had managed to retain, or he would doubtless have confiscated them as well. He had made it very clear to her that anything she carried away, she did so on his sufferance. The trunk already stood in the hall; she had only to finish packing her valise and carpetbag. 'I find myself in the position so many philosophers like Mr. Emerson profess to admire-unburdened by possessions.'
'I'll get a cab,' the Professor replied.
Bergdorf's was not crowded at this time of the early evening; the theater crowd had not yet begun to arrive. Fortunately, the German restaurant had never been one of her father's choices for dining out, or the memories the place evoked would have been too painful to permit her to eat. No, she had no sad ghosts waiting for her here, and Bergdorf's was clearly professor Cathcart's favorite, for the waiters all recognized him and they were shown to a secluded table out of the way of traffic. She wondered what they made of her; too plain to be a member of the demimonde, too shabbily dressed to be a fiancee or a relative. Did they assume she was his housekeeper, being granted a birthday treat?
Perhaps they take me for a suffragette relation, or one who has a religious mania and has given all her worldly goods to Billy Sunday. No matter. The respect they accorded to Professor Cathcart extended even to such peculiar females as he chose to bring with him; service was prompt and polite, and the headwaiter treated her with the deference that might be accorded to one who wore a gown by Worth, rather than one from the cheaper pages of Sears and Roebuck.
She had once worn fine gowns not by Worth, perhaps, but by one of the better Chicago seamstresses. That had been before her father's run of bad luck with his investments, and she had chosen to economize on her gowns as well as in other household matters. It had not mattered to her teachers and fellow students; they probably would not have noticed unless she had donned the chiton and stola of an ancient Greek maiden, and perhaps not even then. Her economies had gone unremarked, which had saved her pride. Since another of her economies was to abjure eating out, she was not forced to parade the slender state of their purses in public.
The Bergdorf was comfortably warm, lit softly with candles and a few well-placed gaslights. The only sounds were those of conversation and the clink of silver on china. The Professor was one who gave a gourmet meal all its due reverence, so they ate in silence. Rosalind was not loath to do so either; the peculiar sour-savory tang of the sauerbraten awoke a hunger of intensity she had not realized was possible, and although she seldom drank, she joined the Professor in a lady sized stein of the Bergdorf's excellent beer. The food vanished from her plate so quickly she might have conjured it away, and the attentive blond-haired, blue-eyed waiter brought her a second serving without being asked.
'Vielen dank,' she said to him, surprising a smile from him. He winked at her, and hurried to answer the summons from another table.
She devoured her second helping with a thoroughness that would have embarrassed her a month ago. Now her capacity for being embarrassed had been exhausted, and her pride flattened like a sheet of vellum in a press.
The waiter returned at the Professor's signal, and cleared away the plates as the Professor ordered Black Forest torte for both of them. Rosalind did not even make a token protest; it might be a long time before she ever ate like this again. Her torte was long gone before the Professor had finished his, and she settled back in her chair with a sigh of melancholy mixed with content.
I must think of some way to earn my way. She had a vague idea that she might take a position as a governess somewhere, or even as a schoolteacher in some Western state. Any thought of achieving a Ph.D. in the classics and medieval literature was out of the question now, of course. She only hoped that she could convince someone that her unconventional education had made her fit to teach the 'Three Rs.'
The waiter arrived to clean off the dessert plates, and with him came coffee. Professor Cathcart settled back in his chair as she sugared and creamed hers liberally, cradling his cup in both hands.
'You must forgive your old friend and teacher his bluntness, but how did you come to such a pass?' he asked.
