The Girl in the Mirror Part 9

"We have used up eight minutes since I gave you your choice," he reminded her.

"You are like a child," she muttered, "spinning his top over a powder-magazine."

Laurie frowned a little.

"Too melodramatic," he murmured.

"I tell you," she said fiercely, "you are acting like a fool! If you interfere with me you will be drawn into all sorts of trouble, perhaps into tragedy, perhaps even into disgrace."

"You're forgetting the net," he reminded her, "the nice net you mentioned this morning, with room for two. Also--" again he looked at the watch--"you're overlooking the value of time. See how fast these little hands are moving. The nearest police station is only two blocks away.

Unless you give me that promise, you will be in it in--" he made a calculation--"in just about four minutes."

She seemed to come to a decision.

"Listen to me," she said, rapidly. "I cannot be frank with you--"

"I've noticed that," Laurie interpolated, "with regret."

She ignored the interruption.

"But I can tell you this much. I am not alone in my--trouble. Others are involved. They are--desperate. It is because of them that I--you understand?"

Laurie shook his head. He did not understand, at all; but vague and unpleasant memories of newspaper stories about espionage and foreign spies suddenly filtered through his mind.

"It sounds an awful mess," he said frankly. "If it's got anything to do with German propaganda--"

She interrupted with a gesture of impatience.

"No, no!" she cried. "I am not a German or a propagandist, or a pacifist or a spy. That much, at least, I can tell you."

"Then that's all right!" Laurie glanced at his watch again. "If you had been a German spy," he added, "with a little round k.n.o.b of hair on the back of your head and bombs in every pocket, I couldn't have had much to do with you, I really couldn't. But as you and your companions are not involved in that kind of thing, I am forced to remind you that you'll be headed toward the station in just one minute."

"I hate you!" she said between her teeth.

He shook his head at her. "Oh, no, you don't!" he said kindly. "But I see plainly that you're a self-willed young person. a.s.sociation with me, and the study of my poise, will do a lot for you. By the way, you have only thirty seconds left."

"Do you want to be killed?"

She hissed the words at him.

"Good gracious, no!" Laurie spoke absently, his eyes on the watch.

"Twenty seconds," he ended.

"Do you want to be maimed or crippled, or--or kidnapped?"

He looked up in surprise.

"I don't know why you imagine I have such lurid tastes," he said, discontentedly. "Of course I don't want any of those things. My nature is a quiet one, and already I'm dreading the excitement of taking you to the station. But now I must ask you to put on your gloves and b.u.t.ton up your coat for our little journey."

"The journey you make with me," she said, with deep meaning, "may be a long and hard one."

He stood up.

"I wouldn't miss it for the world," he told her. "But we'll have to postpone it. Our journey to the station comes first."

She sat still, looking at him.

"I know your type now," she said suddenly. "You live in your little groove, and you think that nothing happens in the world except what you see under your nose."

"Something awfully unpleasant is going to happen under my nose right now," announced her companion, disconsolately. "Come along, please. It's time to start."

She stood up, faced him for a second, and then dropped back into her chair with a gesture of finality. Her expression had changed back to the lethargy of her first moments in the restaurant.

"Very well," she said. "Have it your way." She added significantly, "This may be the last time you have your way about anything!"

"You have a depressing outlook," grumbled Laurie, contentedly sitting down again. "It isn't playing the game to spoil my triumph with such predictions as that, especially as I'm going to have my way about a lot of things right now. I have your word," he added.

"Yes."

"Good! Now I'll give you my program. First of all, I'm going to be a brother to you; and I don't think," he ended thoughtfully, "that I've ever offered to be a brother to any girl before."

"You're a nice boy," she said abruptly.

He smiled at her.

"A nice boy, though a fool. I hoped you would notice that. You'll be dazzled by my virtues before you're through with me." He went on conversationally: "The reason I've never offered to be a brother to any girl before is that I've got a perfectly good sister of my own. Her one fault is that she's always bossed me. I warn you from the start of our relations that I'm going to be the boss. It will be the first time I've ever bossed any one, and I'm looking forward to it a lot."

The faintest suggestion of a smile touched her short upper lip. Above it, her red-brown eyes had softened again. She drew a deep breath.

"It's strange," she said. "You've let me in for all sorts of things you don't realize. And yet, somehow, I feel, for the time at least, as if I had been lying under the weight of the world and some one had lifted the wretched thing off me."

"Can't you, by a supreme effort of the imagination, fancy that I lifted it off?" suggested Laurie, mildly.

This time she really smiled.

"I can," she conceded. "And without any effort at all," she added somberly, "I can fancy us both under it again."

He shook his head.

"That won't do!" he declared. "The lid is off. You've just admitted it.

You feel better for having it off. So do I. As your big brother, and self-appointed counselor, I choose this opportunity to tell you what you're going to do."

She pursed her lips at him. It was the gesture of a rebellious child.

Her entire manner had changed so suddenly that Laurie felt a bewilderment almost equal to his satisfaction in it. For the first time throughout the interview he experienced the thrill she had given him in the mirror.

"Yes?" she prompted.

"In the first place--" He hesitated. The ground that stretched between them now was firmer, but still uncertain. One false step might lose him much of what he had gained. "There's the question of your future," he went on, in a brisk, matter-of-fact tone. "I spent two months last year looking for a job in New York. I was about down to my last cent before I found it. It occurred to me that, perhaps, you--" He was beginning to flounder.