"Gee, it's a mess!" said Birdie, tossing some beribboned lingerie from a
chair into an open trunk. "There's a bag of rolls around here some place.
We can make some tea over the gas."
Nance darted from one object to another with excited cries of admiration.
Everything was sweet and wonderful and perfectly grand! Suddenly she came
to a halt before the dresser, in the center of which stood a large,
framed photograph.
"That's my High Particular," said Birdie, with an uneasy laugh,
"recognize him?"
"It's Mac Clarke!" exclaimed Nance, incredulously, "how on earth did you
ever get his picture?"
"He give it to me. How do you reckon? I hadn't laid eyes on him for a
couple of years 'til I ran across him in New York about a month ago."
"Where'd you see him?"
"At the theater. He come in with a bunch of other college fellows and
recognized me straight off. He stayed in New York two or three days, and
maybe we didn't have a peach of a time! Only he got fired from college
for it when he went back."
"Where's he now?"
"Here in town. Liable to blow in any minute. If he does, you don't want
to let on you ever saw him before. He won't remember you if you don't
remind him. He never thinks of anybody twice."
Nance, poring over every detail of the photograph, held her own counsel.
She was thinking of the night she had stood in the drug-store door, and
he had kept the motor waiting while he smiled at her over his shoulder.
That was a smile that remembered!
"You want to be careful what you say to anybody," Birdie continued,
"there ain't any use airing it around where you live, or what you been
doing.
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