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After they had passed he had stretched out his arm as a sign to turn to the left, and had waved his hand without looking around. My face grew scarlet. What had I become? Why, I might have been a picked-up acquaintance, somebody to be ashamed of! Ruth Chenery Vars where had disappeared that once proud and self-respecting girl?
"I didn't in the least get your name," he broke off. "The good angel flew away so soon." I told him. "Oh, yes, Miss Vars. Thank you. Mine's Jennings. People mumble names so in introductions." He glanced around at the piles of raincoats and racks of umbrellas. I already had my coat on. "You weren't just going, were you?" he inquired brightly. "For if you were, so was I, too.
Miss Armstrong scratched it in her book. "Oh, yes, Ruth Chenery Vars. Your age, please, Miss Vars?" Mrs. Sewall coldly inquired. I told her briefly. "Your birthplace?" And I told her that. "Your education?" she pursued.
"How'd you pull it off, Toots?" he added. "Hope little Cupid had something to do with it." Alec waited until Edith had gone to Boston for a day's shopping, and took me for a long automobile ride. Alec, by the way, is one of this world's saints. He has always been the member of the Vars family who has resigned himself to circumstances.
This was mere existence. Just as I was groping for a handkerchief some little fool of a woman exclaimed, "Oh, there she is in the study! I thought she hadn't gone. O Miss Vars, there's somebody I want you to meet, and meet you. Here she is, Mr. Jennings. Come in. Miss Vars," I was still facing the wall, "Miss Vars, I want to introduce Mr. Jennings."
From assistant to Virginia Van de Vere I became consultant, from consultant, partner finally. Van de Vere's grew, expanded, spread to the house next door. To the two V's upon the door-plate was added at last a third. Van de Vere's became Van de Vere and Vars. My life, like that of a child's, assumed habits, personality, settled down to characteristics of its own.
What I did say was conventional enough simply, "Why, how do you do," to his eager, "Hello, Miss Vars!" while I shook hands with him as he stood beneath me on the ground. "Saw you on Fifth Avenue a week ago," he went on, "hiking for some place in a taxi. Lost you in the crowd at Forty-second. Thought you might be rounding up here before long. So decided I'd run up and say howdy.
Sewall had picked me up and placed me at the zenith of my hopes. But for her, no Mrs. Scot-Williams, no Van de Vere's, no trade of my own, no precious business to work for, and make succeed! "Mrs. Sewall " and then I stopped. There was no encouragement in her expression. "Ah, Miss Vars," she remarked frostily. "Mrs. Sewall please," I begged, "please let me "
She could send her orders to me by the chauffeur; I was sorry; I hoped she would appreciate my position; she had been very good to me; Breckenridge would explain everything, and I was hers faithfully, Ruth Chenery Vars. Esther didn't come back all night nor even the next day.
It was my impulse to escape the grilling that this merciless woman was evidently going to put me to; my first primitive instinct to strike my adversary with some bitterly worded accusation and then turn and fly. But I stood my ground. Without a quiver of obvious embarrassment, or more than a second's hesitation, I replied, looking at Mrs. Sewall squarely. "My name is Ruth Chenery Vars."
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