"Are you all right?"
"Oh, yes," she answered, carelessly; "we are all right, dad. Goodbye."
"We? Who the devil is 'We'?"
"Mr. Vanderdynk and I. We're taking my maid and coming down to Tuxedo
this evening together. I'm in a hurry now."
"What!!!"
"Oh, it's all right, dad. Here, Killian, please explain things to my
father."
Vanderdynk released her hand and picked up the receiver as though it had
been a live wire.
"Is that you, Mr. Carr?" he began--stopped short, and stood listening,
rigid, bewildered, turning redder and redder as her father's fluency
increased. Then, without a word, he hooked up the receiver.
"Is it all right?" she asked calmly. "Was dad--vivacious?"
The young man said: "I'd rather go back into that elevator than go to
Tuxedo.... But--I'm going."
"So am I," said Bushwyck Carr's daughter, dropping both hands on her
lover's shoulders.... "Was he really very--vivid?"
"Very."
The telephone again rang furiously.
He bent his head; she lifted her face and he kissed her.
After a while the racket of the telephone annoyed them, and they slowly
moved away out of hearing.
VIII
"IN HEAVEN AND EARTH"
_The Green Mouse Stirs_
"I've been waiting half an hour for you," observed Smith, dryly, as
Beekman Brown appeared at the subway station, suitcase in hand.
"It was a most extraordinary thing that detained me," said Brown,
laughing, and edging his way into the ticket line behind his friend where
he could talk to him across his shoulder; "I was just leaving the office,
Smithy, when Snuyder came in with a card.
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