Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Don-a-dreams.djvu/246

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
234
DON-A-DREAMS

the chimney. They wouldn't leave the place, and she hadn't the nerve to go to the police-court, so she has to get along with them. But I shouldn't advise you to call on me there. Generally, she doesn't answer the door-bell. And when she does, she isn't exactly polite."

Because of this state of things, Don and he had always met at appointed places on street corners or in public squares; and now Don replied to the invitation to call with a doubt of Mrs. Kahrle's reception of him. "Well," the actor said, "come at eight o'clock and I'll meet you at the door."

He went—to escape from the thought that he should be writing a letter, to his uncle, about Conroy.

It was an old-fashioned house with a balcony that crossed the sills of the lower windows and connected with the porch steps; and when Don arrived, that evening, two girls in summer gowns were sitting with Walter Pittsey on the balcony, fanning themselves with newspapers and chatting to him while he smoked. He rose to greet Don and to introduce him to "Miss Arden" and "Miss Morrison"; and because Don could see their faces only dimly—and knew that they could not see his—he was not embarrassed. He was all the more startled, in his security, when Miss Morrison, as he sat beside her, said in a calm aside: "I suppose you have forgotten me, Mr. Gregg?"

He stared at her in the half-light, trying to distinguish her features, of which she gave him only the indistinct profile. (Miss Arden was continuing her conversation with Pittsey: "Oh, she fell down in it. Terribly! Terribly! She wasn't in the part for a minute.") Don said: "Why, no—— Yes. I——"