"Thanks," she answered. "Wouldn't it be more appropriate if you wished
that on us in person before we sail?"
"I don't know," he mumbled. "I--"
A perfectly mad impulse seized him.
"Sophie," he said sharply into the receiver.
"Yes."
He heard the quick intake of her breath at the other end, almost a gasp.
And the single word was slightly uncertain.
"What did you mean by a man standing on his own feet?"
She did not apparently have a ready answer. He pictured her, receiver in
hand, and he did not know if she were startled, or surprised--or merely
amused. That last was intolerable. And suddenly he felt like a fool.
Before that soft, sweet voice could lead him into further masculine
folly he hung up and walked out of the booth. For the next twenty
minutes his opinion of John P. Henderson's judgment of men was rather
low. He did not feel himself to be an individual with any force of
character. In homely language he said to himself that he, Wesley
Thompson, was nothing but a pot of mush.
However, there in the offing loomed the job. He turned into the first
clothing store he found, and purchased one of those all-covering duck
garments affected by motor-car workers. By that time he had recovered
sufficiently to note that an emotional disturbance does not always
destroy a man's appetite for food.