You know how it is.” “Oh, no, you mustn’t do that,” cautioned Roberta.
“Not yet anyhow.”
She was so confused that quite unconsciously she was giving Clyde to understand that she was expecting him to come around some time later.
“Well,” smiled Clyde, who could see that she was yielding in part.
“We could just walk out near the end of some street here — that street you live in, if you wish. There are no houses out there.
Or there’s a little park — Mohawk — just west of Dreamland on the Mohawk Street line. It’s right on the river.
You might come out there. I could meet you where the car stops.
Will you do that?”
“Oh, I’d be afraid to do that I think — go so far, I mean.
I never did anything like that before.”
She looked so innocent and frank as she said this that Clyde was quite carried away by the sweetness of her. And to think he was making a clandestine appointment with her.
“I’m almost afraid to go anywhere here alone, you know. People talk so here, they say, and some one would be sure to see me.
But —”
“Yes, but what?”
“I’m afraid I’m staying too long at your desk here, don’t you think?”
She actually gasped as she said it.
And Clyde realizing the openness of it, although there was really nothing very unusual about it, now spoke quickly and forcefully.
“Well, then, how about the end of that street you live in?
Couldn’t you come down there for just a little while to-night — a half hour or so, maybe?”
“Oh, I couldn’t make it to-night, I think — not so soon.
I’ll have to see first, you know. Arrange, that is.
But another day.”
She was so excited and troubled by this great adventure of hers that her face, like Clyde’s at times, changed from a half smile to a half frown without her realizing that it was registering these changes.
“Well, then, how about Wednesday night at eight-thirty or nine?
Couldn’t you do that?
Please, now.”
Roberta considered most sweetly, nervously.
Clyde was enormously fascinated by her manner at the moment, for she looked around, conscious, or so she seemed, that she was being observed and that her stay here for a first visit was very long.
“I suppose I’d better be going back to my work now,” she replied without really answering him.
“Wait a minute,” pled Clyde.
“We haven’t fixed on the time for Wednesday.
Aren’t you going to meet me?
Make it nine or eight- thirty, or any time you want to.
I’ll be there waiting for you after eight if you wish.
Will you?”
“All right, then, say eight-thirty or between eight-thirty and nine, if I can.
Is that all right?
I’ll come if I can, you know, and if anything does happen I’ll tell you the next morning, you see.”
She flushed and then looked around once more, a foolish, flustered look, then hurried back to her bench, fairly tingling from head to toe, and looking as guilty as though she had been caught red-handed in some dreadful crime.
And Clyde at his desk was almost choking with excitement.
The wonder of her agreeing, of his talking to her like that, of her venturing to make a date with him at all here in Lycurgus, where he was so well-known!
Thrilling!
For her part, she was thinking how wonderful it would be just to walk and talk with him in the moonlight, to feel the pressure of his arm and hear his soft appealing voice. ? Chapter 17
I t was quite dark when Roberta stole out on Wednesday night to meet Clyde.
But before that what qualms and meditations in the face of her willingness and her agreement to do so.
For not only was it difficult for her to overcome her own mental scruples within, but in addition there was all the trouble in connection with the commonplace and religious and narrow atmosphere in which she found herself imbedded at the Newtons’.
For since coming here she had scarcely gone anywhere without Grace Marr.
Besides on this occasion — a thing she had forgotten in talking to Clyde — she had agreed to go with the Newtons and Grace to the Gideon Baptist Church, where a Wednesday prayer meeting was to be followed by a social with games, cake, tea and ice cream.
In consequence she was troubled severely as to how to manage, until it came back to her that a day or two before Mr. Liggett, in noting how rapid and efficient she was, had observed that at any time she wanted to learn one phase of the stitching operations going on in the next room, he would have her taken in hand by Mrs. Braley, who would teach her.
And now that Clyde’s invitation and this church affair fell on the same night, she decided to say that she had an appointment with Mrs. Braley at her home.