Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/55

Rh into the gutter. Then, without any undignified haste, but with sufficient celerity, he shouldered his way through the midday crowd on Broadway, turned a corner, and hurried back to his work.

He had almost forgotten the incident before he saw her again. He had not gone near the barber shop meanwhile. He had not given her a thought—except a vaguely resentful one. And when he met her face to face in City Hall Park, he was not sure where he had seen her before. She said, quite frankly and unembarrassed: "I want to thank you. Don't you remember me?"

"Sure I do," he replied, and he did not say it flippantly. She had spoken in that wonderful voice of hers, and it had made him respectful at once.

He turned back with her, and she accepted his escort as a matter of course. They said nothing of any importance; they parted at the steps of the "El" in Park Place, with a nod and a smile; and Larry was half way back to his own station of the Third Avenue Elevated at Brooklyn Bridge before it occurred to him that he would like to see her again and had not provided the opportunity of doing so.

The omission made it necessary for him to stand opposite the barber shop, next noon, and wait for her to come out for luncheon.

There is, in such affairs, an unwritten code that prohibits the asking of personal questions. The young man must accept the young woman "sight unseen"—as the boys say when they "swap" with their hands