The table tipped whenever
you touched it. The chair upon which he sat had lost an original leg
and didn't take kindly to its substitute. The china was thick and
chipped. The walls were unfinished and draughty, the ceiling
obviously leaked. There had been some effort to keep the place
livable, for the faded curtains were at least clean and the floor
swept--but the blight of decay and poverty lay hopelessly upon it
all.
And what was a young girl--a girl with level eyes and lifted chin--
doing in this galley? . . . Undoubtedly the less he bothered himself
about that question the better. This young person was probably just
as she wished to appear, careless and content. And in any case it
was none of his business.
The sensible thing for him to do was to pack his bag and turn his
back--the absurd old man with the umbrella . . . pshaw! . . . He
wouldn't go home, of course. Aunt Caroline would say "I told you so"
. . . no, she wouldn't say it--she would look it, which was worse . . .
he had come away for a rest cure and a rest cure he intended to
have . . . with a groan he thought of the pictures he had formed of
this place, the comfortable seclusion, the congenial old scholar,
the capable secretary, the--he looked up to find that Miss Farr had
returned and was regarding him with a cool and pleasantly aloof
consideration.
"Are you wondering how soon you may decently leave?" she inquired.
"We are not at all formal here.
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