Page:That Royle Girl (Balmer).pdf/363

 feeling herself queerly unsteady, and therefore speaking more positively.

"I'm going with her," iterated Calvin, also too emphatically, and Ellison gazed from him to her and to him.

"Oh, all right!" said Ellison and looked at her. "It's all right with me!" He pulled off a glove to offer a hand to Calvin. "See you later. I'll report at the office for both of us."

Calvin ignored the remark and the hand, but thereby affronted Ellison not at all. Together they moved away, Joan Daisy Royle and Calvin Clarke, leaving Ellison beside his car.

She was become suddenly seized with strange, possessive pangs when on the stairs to the station some one jostled Calvin Clarke; she wanted with her hands to fend others from him; she wanted with her bare fingers to feel that his shoulder was in place. How had she ever let him accompany her in the cab Sunday morning before he had been bandaged? She could not bear it now.

"Will you tell me where you are going in town?" he asked as they waited upon the platform, facing each other.

"To the office," she told him; and these were their sole words, yet their relations had become amazingly intimate since they had left Ellison on the street. No one upon the platform recognized them and when they boarded the train and some one gave her a seat, Calvin thanked him and clung to the strap before her, looking down at.her and at no one else.

She wished he would take the seat but she dared not suggest it more directly than by accusing herself, saying, "I ought to have gone along with Mr. Ellison."

"What?" asked Calvin, and she flushed hotly and put her hand to the edge of his coat, explaining, "I mean, we ought to have gone in his car."