Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Don-a-dreams.djvu/353

 "Well, perhaps you will be."

"Yes! Per-haps !" She stood up, settling her jacket at the waist with spread hands, arms akimbo; and there was something so intimate in this little feminine attitude of the boudoir, that it came to him as a mark of the unconstraint of friendship at which they had arrived. "It's time we were having our suppers."

"Shan't we have supper together?"

"No. You must economize. Mine is paid for in advance. You may call for me at seven."

Mrs. McGahn received them in a parlour full of all the old furniture and all the accumulated bric-a-brac of thirty years of housekeeping. She received them with a suspicion which neither of them understood, and she listened to Don, staring, silent, and wrapped majestically in her black shawl. "I don't rent rooms t' any unmarried women," she said, "except I know who they is."

"Oh, I beg your pardon," Don apologized, "Mrs. McGahn, this is Miss Richardson."

Margaret shook hands with her in a manner that evidently had some effect. She wavered, looking from one to the other, but she seemed still unsatisfied.

"Miss Richardson is studying music here," Don explained. "She doesn't wish to board any longer. I suggested that there was a room empty here which you might let her have."

She asked Margaret: "Where're yer—yer folks?"

"My mother has gone back to Canada. We have been boarding. I thought this would be cheaper." She smiled, amused.