“I railly must be off,” said Freckles earnestly, “but I’m thanking you more than you’ll ever know for your kindness. I’ll just be drinking bowls of icy things all me way home in the thoughts of it.”
Down came the Angel’s foot. Her eyes flashed indignantly. “There’s no sense in that,” she said. “How do you think you would have felt when you knew I was warm and thirsty and you went and brought me a drink and I wouldn’t take it because—because goodness knows why! You can ride faster to make up for the time. I’ve just thought out what I want to fix for you.”
She stepped to his side and deliberately slipped her hand under his arm—that right arm that ended in an empty sleeve.
“You are coming,” she said firmly. “I won’t have it.”
Freckles could not have told how he felt, neither could anyone else. His blood rioted and his head swam, but he kept his wits. He bent over her.
“Please don’t, Angel,” he said softly. “You don’t understand.”
How Freckles came to understand was a problem.
“It’s this,” he persisted. “If your father met me on the street, in my station and dress, with you on me arm, he’d have every right to be caning me before the people, and not a finger would I lift to stay him.”
The Angel’s eyes snapped. “If you think my father cares about my doing anything that is right and kind, and that makes me happy to do—why, then you completely failed in reading my father, and I’ll ask him and just show you.”
She dropped Freckles’ arm and turned toward the entrance to the building. “Why, look there!” she exclaimed.
Her father stood in a big window fronting the street, a bundle of papers in his hand, interestedly watching the little scene, with eyes that comprehended quite as thoroughly as if he had heard every word. The Angel caught his glance and made a despairing little gesture toward Freckles. The Man of Affairs answered her with a look of infinite tenderness. He nodded his head and waved the papers in the direction she had indicated, and the veriest dolt could have read the words his lips formed: “Take him along!”
A sudden trembling seized Freckles. At sight of the Angel’s father he had stepped back as far from her as he could, leaned the wheel against him, and snatched off his hat.
The Angel turned on him with triumphing eyes.
She was highly strung and not accustomed to being thwarted. “Did You see that?” she demanded. “Now are you satisfied? Will you come, or must I call a policeman to bring you?”
Freckles went. There was nothing else to do. Guiding his wheel, he walked down the street beside her. On every hand she was kept busy giving and receiving the cheeriest greetings. She walked into the parlors exactly as if she owned them. A clerk came hurrying to meet her.
“There’s a table vacant beside a window where it is cool. I’ll save it for you,” and he started back.
“Please not,” said the Angel. “I’ve taken this man unawares, when he’s in a rush. I’m afraid if we sit down we’ll take too much time and afterward he will blame me.”
She walked to the fountain, and a long row of people stared with all the varying degrees of insolence and curiosity that Freckles had felt they would. He glanced at the Angel. Now would she see?
“On my soul!” he muttered under his breath. “They don’t aven touch her!”
She laid down her sunshade and gloves. She walked to the end of the counter and turned the full battery of her eyes on the attendant.
“Please,” she said.
The white-aproned individual stepped back and gave delighted assent. The Angel stepped beside him, and selecting a tall, flaring glass, of almost paper thinness, she stooped and rolled it in a tray of cracked ice.
“I want to mix a drink for my friend,” she said. “He has a long, hot ride before him, and I don’t want him started off with one of those old palate-teasing sweetnesses that you mix just on purpose to drive a man back in ten minutes.” There was an appreciative laugh from the line at the counter.
“I want a clear, cool, sparkling drink that has a tang of acid in it. Where’s the cherry phosphate? That, not at all sweet, would be good; don’t you think?”
The attendant did think. He pointed out the different taps, and the Angel compounded the drink, while Freckles, standing so erect he almost leaned backward, gazed at her and paid no attention to anyone else. When she had the glass brimming, she tilted a little of its contents into a second glass and tasted it.
“That’s entirely too sweet for a thirsty man,” she said.
She poured out half the mixture, and refilling the glass, tasted it a second time. She submitted that result to the attendant. “Isn’t that about the thing?” she asked.
He replied enthusiastically. “I’d get my wages raised ten a month if I could learn that trick.”
The Angel carried the brimming, frosty glass to Freckles. He removed his hat, and lifting the icy liquid even with her eyes and looking straight into them, he said in the mellowest of all the mellow tones of his voice: “I’ll
