"Tired, dear?" asked her mother. She said it under her breath in the
hope that Portia wouldn't hear.
"No," said Rose. "Just sleepy." She yawned again, turned to Portia, and,
somewhat to their surprise, said: "Yes, what do you mean--the _real_
Rodney Aldrich? He looked real enough to me. And his arm felt real--the
one he was going to punch the conductor with."
"I didn't mean he was imaginary," Portia explained. "I only meant I
didn't believe it was the Rodney Aldrich--who's so awfully prominent;
either somebody else who happened to have the same name, or somebody who
just--said that was his name."
"What's the matter with the prominent one?" Rose wanted to know. "Why
couldn't it have been him?"
Portia admitted that it could, so far as that went, but insisted on an
inherent improbability. A millionaire, a member of one of the oldest
families in the city--a social swell, the brother of that Mrs. Martin
Whitney whose pictures the papers were always publishing on the
slightest excuse--wasn't likely to be found riding in street-cars, in
the first place, and the improbability reached a climax during a furious
storm like that of last night, when, if ever during the year, the real
Rodney Aldrich would be saying, "Home, James," to a liveried chauffeur,
and sinking back luxuriously among the whip-cord cushions of a palatial
limousine.
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