Page:The Whisper on the Stair by Lyon Mearson (1924).djvu/27

 The name was connoting more to him at the moment—dimples, flushed velvety cheeks, a skin you love to touch, it fits well around the neck, alone at last, till death do you part, Mrs. Valentine Morley⸺

“Snap out of it!” he commanded himself suddenly, smiling into the fire. “Life isn’t like that, you old fool. You don’t see a girl for one minute one day and marry her the next. Things don’t go as speedily as all that. And yet, those eyelashes! Like deep fringes over a midnight pool⸺”

“Dinner’s ready, sir,” announced Eddie.

In solitary state he made his way into the dining room and seated himself at the table. He attacked his grapefruit. Jessica⸺ There was something about the name he liked instinctively. Even if the name had not been associated with⸺ but then, he found he could no longer dissociate the name from the girl in the book shop.

“Eddie,” he said to his man, “beautiful woman is Nature’s noblest work, eh?”

“Yes, sir. So I have been led to believe, sir.”

“Man is a lonely animal, without woman, isn’t he?”

“Yes, sir; so I have been informed, sir,” replied the impassive Eddie, removing the grapefruit.

“You have—er—never engaged in—er—matrimony, Eddie?”

“No, sir; I think not, sir.”

“Very good, Eddie,” replied his employer.

Why should such a girl want two dollars and thirteen cents? Val gave it up. And yet, if she was in trouble—and anybody who needed two thirteen must be in trouble, Val conceived that it was up to him to give her a lift out of it. Of course, he said to himself, he would go out of his way to help everybody who