CHAPTER XLVI

Flossie had been working with one eye on the clock all afternoon.  At the closing hour she went out into Lothbury with the other girls; but instead of going up Moorgate Street as usual, she turned out of Prince’s Street to her right, and thence made her way westward as quickly as she could for the crowd.  It was September, a day when it was good to be out of doors at that hour.  The sunlight filtered into the dusty thoroughfare from the west, on her left the sprawling mounted legends over the shops were so many gold blazons on an endless field of grey; on her right, a little way ahead, the tall plane-tree in Wood Street hung out its green leaves over Cheapside like a signal.  Thither Flossie was bound.

As she sidled out of the throng into the quiet little lane, Mr. Rickman came forward, raising his hat.  He had been waiting under the plane-tree for twenty minutes, and was now beguiling his sylvan solitude with a cigarette.  Two years had worked a considerable change in his appearance.  His face had grown graver and clearer cut.  He had lost his hectic look and had more the air of a man of the world than of a young poet about town.  To Flossie’s admiration and delight he wore an irreproachable frock-coat and shining linen; she interpreted these changes as corresponding with the improvement in his prospects, and judged that the profession of literature was answering fairly well.

They shook hands seriously, as if they attached importance to these trifles.  “Am I dreadfully late?” she asked.

“Dreadfully.”  He smiled with one corner of his mouth, holding his cigarette firmly in the other, while he took from her the little cape she carried over her arm.

“I expect I’ve kept you waiting a good bit?” A keen observer of Flossie’s face might have detected in it a faintly triumphant appreciation of the fact.  “I’m awfully sorry I got behind-hand and had to stay till I’d finished up.”

“Never mind, Flossie, it don’t matter.  At any rate it’s worth it.”  The words implied that Mr. Rickman’s time was valuable, otherwise he would not have given it to Flossie.  “Where shall we go, and what shall we do?”

“I don’t much care.”

“Shall we have tea somewhere while we’re making up our minds?”

“Well—­I wouldn’t mind.  I hadn’t time to get any at the Bank.”

“All right.  Come along.”  And they plunged into Cheapside again, he breasting the stream, making a passage for her.  They found a favourite confectioner’s in St. Paul’s Churchyard, where they had sometimes gone before.  He noticed that she took her seat with rather a weary air.

“Floss, you must come for a walk on the Embankment.  You look as if you didn’t get out enough.  Why will you go up and down in that abominable underground?  You’re awfully white, you know.”

“I never had a red face.”

“Then what’s the matter?”