Page:That Royle Girl (Balmer).pdf/247

 and before she went to work. Dads and mamma and she were at a hotel and, as usual, they were to leave the hotel, unceremoniously. While making their preparations, a boy was posted to watch in their rooms. He was about fifteen years old and a very nice looking boy and most embarrassed at his errand and extremely considerate of her. She remembered how very red his clear cheeks became and what very light hair he had. He and she spoke hardly a dozen words; but they studied each other, and both remembered the meeting years afterward, though she did not then know his name.

This, she had related to Max Elmen, and she remembered distinctly that he had planned to "use" it; he had prepared it for use, rehearsing her in question and answer. Then, so she recollected, he had decided not to use it, having turned to the opinion that the danger from it outweighed its obvious advantages, but later he had reconsidered and drilled her over the ground again. Yet now she doubted which answer he wanted. If she could see him clearly she would know, but she could scarcely see him at all, and she must answer.

"I met Fred Ketlar when I was twelve years old and when he was a bell-boy in a hotel here in Chicago."

"Obviously at that time no one could say that your association," Mr. Elmen started a sequence of familiar words and, precisely as he had drilled with her, he corrected himself and asked—"was there any sentimental feeling whatever between you and the lad at that time?"

"Why, no," replied Joan Daisy.

"What, if anything, served especially to direct your attention to him?" asked Max, and Joan Daisy guessed that she had remembered wrongly and that the last decision of Mr. Elmen had been to omit this episode; but since he had started it, he had to continue with it, and so must she. Accordingly she spoke into the glare the