The next morning was very cold, and Nannie, coming early into Kingdon Knox's office to take his letters, was in a glow after her walk through the snowy streets. Her cheeks were red, her eyes sparkled, and the ring on her finger sparkled.
Knox at once noticed the ring. "So that's it," he said, and leaned back in his chair. "Let's talk about it a little."
They talked about it more than a little, and the burden of Kingdon Knox's argument was that it was a pity. She was too young and pretty to marry a poor man and live in a funny little flat and do her own work and spoil her nails with dishwashing. "Personally, I think it's rather dreadful. A waste of you, if you want the truth."
Poor Nannie, listening, saw her castles falling. It would be rather dreadful--dishwashing and a gas stove and getting meals.
"He is awfully in love with me," she managed to say at last.
"And you?" He leaned forward a little. Nannie was aware of the feeling of excitement which he could always rouse in her. When he spoke like that she saw herself as something rather perfect and princesslike.
"Wait--for Prince Charming," he said.
Nannie was sure that when Prince Charming came he would be like Mr. Knox; younger perhaps, but with that same lovely manner.
"Of course," Mr. Knox said gently, "I suppose I ought not to advise, but if I were you"--he touched the sparkling ring--"I should give it back to him."
So after several absorbing talks with her employer on the subject, Nannie gave the ring back, and when poor Dick passed his friend the policeman on his way home he stopped and told his story.
"They are all like that," Tommy said, "but if I were you I wouldn't take 'no' for an answer."
Dick brightened. "Wouldn't you?"
"Not if I had to carry her off under my arm," said Tommy between his teeth.
"But I can't carry her off, Tommy--and she won't go."
"She'll go if you ain't afraid of her," Tommy told him with solemn emphasis. "I was afraid."
They were under the street lamp, and Dick stared at him in astonishment. "I didn't know you were afraid of anything."
"I didn't know it either," was Tommy's grim response, "until I met her. But I've known it ever since."
"Well, it's hard luck."
"It is hardest at Christmas time," said Tommy, "and my beat ain't the best one to make me cheerful. There are too many stores. And dolls in the windows. And drums. And horns. And Santa Claus handing out things to kids. And I've got to see it, with money just burning in my pocket to buy things and to have a tree of my own and a turkey in my oven and a table with some one who cares at the other end. And all I'll get out of the merry season is a table d'hôte at Nitti's and a box of cigars from the boys."
"Ain't women the limit, Tommy?"
"Well"--Tommy's tone held a note of forced cheerfulness--"that little redhead must have had some reason for not wanting you, Dick. Maybe we men ain't worth it."
"Worth what?"
"Marrying. A woman's got a square deal coming to her, and she doesn't always get it."
"She'd get it with you, and she'd get it with me; you know that, Tommy."
"She might," said Tommy pessimistically, "if the good Lord helped us."
Nannie on the day after her break with Dick was blushingly aware of the bareness of her third finger as she took Kingdon Knox's dictation. When he had finished his letters, Knox smiled at her. "So you gave it back," he said.
"Yes."
"Good little girl. You'll find something much better if you wait. And I don't want you wasted." He opened a drawer and took out a long box. He opened it and lifted a string of beads. They were of carved ivory, and matched the cream of Nannie's complexion. They were strung strongly on a thick thread of scarlet silk, and there was a scarlet tassel at the end.
"They are for you," he said. "It is my first Christmas present to you; but I hope it won't be the last."
Nannie's heart beat so that she could almost hear it. "Oh, thank you," she said breathlessly; "they're so beautiful."
But she did not know how rare they were, nor how expensive until she wore them in Mary's room that night.
"Where did you get them, Nannie?"
"Mr. Knox gave them to me."
There was dead silence, then Mary said: "Nannie, you ought not to take them."
"Why not?"
"They cost such an awful lot, Nannie. They look simple, but they aren't. The carving is exquisite."
"Well, he gave you beads, Mary."
Mary's face was turned away. "It was different. I have been such a long time in the office."
"I don't think it is much different, and I don't see how I can give them back, Mary."
Mary did not argue, but when a little later Nannie told of her broken engagement, Mary said sharply: "But, Nannie--why?"
"Well, mother doesn't care much for the idea. She--she thinks a girl is much better off to keep on at the office."
Mary was lying in her long chair under the lamp. She had a cushion under her head, and her hand shaded her eyes. "Did--Mr. Knox have anything to do with it?"
"What makes you ask that, Mary?"
"Did he?"
"Well, yes. You know what I told you; he thinks I'd be--wasted."
"On Dick?"
"Yes."
Mary lay for a long time with her hand over her eyes; then she said: "If you don't marry Dick, what about your future, Nannie?"
"There's time enough to think about that. And--and I can wait."
"For what?"
Nannie blushed and laughed a little. "Prince Charming."
After that there was a silence, out of which Nannie asked: "Does your head ache, Mary?"
"A little."
"Can't I get you something?"
"No. After I've rested a bit I'll take a walk."
Mary's walk led her by the lighted shop windows. The air was keen and cold and helped her head. But it did not help her heart. She had a sense of suffocation when she thought of Nannie.
She stopped in front of one of the shops. There were dolls in the window, charming, round-eyed, ringleted. One of them was especially captivating, with fat blond curls, fat legs, blue silk socks and slippers, crisp frills and a broad blue hat.
"How I should have loved her when I was a little girl," was Mary's thought as she stood looking in. Then: "How a child of my own would have loved her."
She made up her mind that she would buy the doll--in the morning when the shop opened. It was a whimsical thing to do, to give herself a doll at her time of life. But it would be in a sense symbolic. She had no child to which to give it; she would give it to the child who was once herself.
She came home with a lighter heart and with the knowledge of what she had to do. She put on her blue house coat and sat down to her desk with its embossed leather fittings, and there under the lovely, lamp which Kingdon Knox had given her she wrote to Nannie.
She gave the letter to Nannie the next morning. "I want you to read it when you are all alone. Then tear it up. It must always be just between you and me, Nannie."
Nannie read the letter in the lunch hour. She got her lunch at a cafeteria and there was a rest room. It was very quiet and she had a corner to herself. She wondered what Mary had to say to her, and why she didn't talk it out instead of writing about it.
But Mary had felt that she could not trust herself to speak. There would have been Nannie's eyes to meet, questions to answer; and this meant so much. Paper and pen were impersonal.
"It isn't easy to talk such things out, Nannie. I should never have written this if I had not realized last night that your feet were following the path which my own have followed for fifteen years. And I knew that you were envying me and wanting to be like me; and I am saying what I shall say in this letter so that I may save you, Nannie.
"When I first came into Mr. Knox's office I was young like you, and I had a lover, young and fine like Dick, and he satisfied me. We had our plans--of a home and the happiness we should have together. If I had married him, I should now have sons and daughters growing up about me, and when Christmas came there would be a tree and young faces smiling, and my husband, smiling.
"But Mr. Knox talked to me as he talked to you. He told me, too, to wait--for Prince Charming. He told me I was too fine to be wasted. He hinted that the man I was planning to marry was a plain fellow, not good enough for me. He talked and I listened. He opened vistas. I saw myself raised to a different sphere by some man like Mr. Knox--just as well groomed, just as distinguished, just as rich and wonderful.
"But such men don't come often into the lives of girls like you and me, Nannie. I know that now. I did not know it then. But Mr. Knox should have known it. Yet he held out the hope; and at last he robbed me of my future, of the little home, my fine, strong husband. He robbed me of my woman's heritage of a child in my arms.
"And in return he gave me--nothing. I have found in the years that I have been with him that he likes to be admired and looked up to by pretty women. He likes to mold us into something exquisite and ornamental, he likes to feel that he has molded us. He likes to see our blushes. All these years that I have been with him, he has liked to feel that I looked upon him as the ideal toward which all my girlish dreams tended.