Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Don-a-dreams.djvu/233

 The faint odour of violets—her favourite perfume—came to him from the paper. He put it back in his breast pocket, folded his arms over it, and smiled at the sun-cracked asphalt of the walk. "Miss Margaret!"

Next day, he spent his forenoon in Central Park, and thereafter he made daily visits to one or another of the green oases in the city's desert of brick and stone, refreshing himself for the afternoon's work, and pondering over his new experience of life which that work him given him. His evenings he spent with Conroy, who was full of anecdotes of "Scotty" and "Redney" and the Irish truck-drivers and warehousemen with whom he worked. And when Conroy and Pittsey went out together, Don remained to write his letters to his mother—whom he tried to cheer with vague reports that he was well and happy and at work—and to his uncle, far whom he had the good news of Conroy's steadiness. He was never interrupted by the expected arrival of the mysterious Tower. He took out his volume of Emerson, one night, but only that he might recover from it his fading picture of Margaret. He cut out the shadowy face and put it in the back of his watch-case where he might look at it, the last thing before going to bed, under pretence of seeing the time; and his thoughts of her were like an evening prayer to him.

It was on one of his trips to Central Park that he saw Tower again—from the street car, as Tower was hurrying down Sixth Avenue towards the theatrical agencies that house near Herald Square—and on a