11
. Yet there was nothing conceited about him. Quite the reverse. He was generally wholly deprecating in manner, as though he himself were of least importance. Until aroused. In our days of learning, I saw Georg once--just once--thoroughly angered.
"... Came up promptly, didn't you?" Georg was saying. He was leading me to the house doorway, but I stopped him.
"Let's go to the grove," I suggested. We turned down from the small viaduct, passed the house, and went into the heavy grove of trees nearby.
"He's hungry," Elza declared. "Jac, did you eat at the office tonight?"
"Yes," I said.
"Did you really?"
"Some," I admitted. In truth the run up here had brought me a thoroughly hearty appetite, which I just realized.
"I was pretty busy, you know," I added. "Such a night--but don't you bother."
But she had already scurried away toward the house. Dear little Elza! I wished then, for the hundredth time, that I was a man of wealth--or at least, not as poor as a tower timekeeper. True, I made fair money--but the urge to spend it recklessly dominated me. I decided in that moment, to reform for good; and lay by enough to justify asking a woman to be my wife.
We reclined on a mossy bank in the grove of trees, so thick a grove that it hid the house from our sight.
The doctor extinguished the glowing lights with which the tree-branches were dotted. We were in the semi-darkness of a beautiful, moonlit night.
"Don't go to sleep, Jac!"
I became aware that Georg and his father were smiling at me.
I sat up, snapping my wits into alertness. "No. Of course not. I guess I'm tired. You've no idea what the office was like tonight. Roaring."
"I can imagine," Georg said. "You were at Park Sixty when the President fell, weren't you?"
"Yes. But I wasn't supposed to be. I wasn't assigned to that. How did you guess?"
"Elza saw you. She had our finder on you--I couldn't push her away from it." His slow smile was quizzical.
"On me