Page:Pleased to Meet You (1927).pdf/24

 the time advertised, to call a cab. They slipped away from the modest home where Nyla had kept house for her widowed father. Now, in an elderly vehicle of Detroit lineage, they came clanking solemnly down the famous alley of lime trees.

Nyla, a handsome spirited girl of nineteen, was naturally elated.

"Now, Father," she said gaily, "you mustn't be nervous. Everything will be all right. Don't push your hat over one eye like that."

Guadeloupe fidgeted unhappily in the new outfit of cutaway coat and wing collar which she had insisted on his buying. Nyla had carefully observed the British foreign minister when that handsome creature was in Farniente, and had planned the President's attire on the same lines. It was less successful on his short thick figure. His hands flitted instinctively in search of his pipe, but the arrangement of pockets in a cutaway coat was unfamiliar.

"I am nervous," he said, and began to pull off his gloves.