"I'm coming to take you to lunch with me some day, remember," said Miss Saunders, departing. And she smiled another farewell from the door.
"Isn't she sweet?" said Susan.
"And how well she would come along just as our rich and expensive order is served!" Billy added, and they both laughed.
"It looks good to ME!" Susan assured him contentedly. "I'll give you half that other sandwich if you can tell me what the orchestra is playing now."
"The slipper thing, from 'Boheme'," Billy said scornfully. Susan's eyes widened with approval and surprise. His appreciation of music was an incongruous note in Billy's character.
There was presently a bill to settle, which Susan, as became a lady, seemed to ignore. But she could not long ignore her escort's scowling scrutiny of it.
"What's that?" demanded Mr. Oliver, scowling at the card. "Twenty cents for WHAT?"
"For bread and butter, sir," said the waiter, in a hoarse, confidential whisper. "Not served with sandwiches, sir." Susan's heart began to thump.
"Billy--" she began.
"Wait a minute," Billy muttered. "Just wait a minute! It doesn't say anything about that."
The waiter respectfully indicated a line on the menu card, which Mr. Oliver studied fixedly, for what seemed to Susan a long time.
"That's right," he said finally, heavily, laying a silver dollar on the check. Keep it." The waiter did not show much gratitude for his tip. Susan and Billy, ruffled and self-conscious, walked, with what dignity they could, out into the night.
"Damn him!" said Billy, after a rapidly covered half-block.
"Oh, Billy, don't! What do you care!" Susan said, soothingly.
"I don't care," he snapped. Adding, after another brooding minute, "we ought to have better sense than to go into such places!"
"We're as good as anyone else!" Susan asserted, hotly.
"No, we're not. We're not as rich," he answered bitterly.
"Billy, as if MONEY mattered!"
"Oh, of course, money doesn't matter," he said with fine satire. "Not at all! But because we haven't got it, those fellows, on thirty per, can throw the hooks into us at every turn. And, if we threw enough money around, we could be the rottenest man and woman on the face of the globe, we could be murderers and thieves, even, and they'd all be falling over each other to wait on us!"
"Well, let's murder and thieve, then!" said Susan blithely.