He drew a long breath.
“I think I understand,” he said slowly,
“but—you could have saved me something.
I must have given you all a great deal of amusement.”
“Oh, no,” I protested. “I—I
want to tell you—”
But he deliberately left me and went over to the door.
There he turned and looked down at Aunt Selina.
He was a little white, but there was no passion in
his face.
“Thank you for telling me all this, Miss Caruthers,”
he said easily. “Now that you and I know,
I’m afraid the others will miss their little
diversion. Good night.”
Oh, it was all right for Jim to laugh and say that
he was only huffed a little and would be over it by
morning. I knew better. There was something
queer in his face as he went out. He did not
even glance in my direction. He had said very
little, but he had put me as effectually in the wrong
as if he had not kissed me—deliberately
kissed me—that very evening, on the roof.
I did not go to sleep again. I lay wretchedly
thinking things over and trying to remember who Jezebel
was, and toward morning I distinctly heard the knob
of the door turn. I mistrusted my ears, however,
and so I got up quietly and went over in the darkness.
There was no sound outside, but when I put my hand
on the knob I felt it move under my fingers.
The counter pressure evidently alarmed whoever it
was, for the knob was released and nothing more happened.
But by this time anything so uncomplicated as the
fumbling of a knob at night had no power to disturb
me. I went back to bed.
Hunger roused everybody early the next morning, Friday.
Leila Mercer had discovered a box of bonbons that
she had forgotten, and we divided them around.
Aunt Selina asked for the candied fruit and got it—quite
a third of the box. We gathered in the lower
hall and on the stairs and nibbled nauseating sweets
while Mr. Harbison examined the telephone.
He did not glance in my direction. Betty and
Dal were helping him, and he seemed very cheerful.
Max sat with me on the stairs. Mr. Harbison had
just unscrewed the telephone box from the wall and
was squinting into it, when Bella came downstairs.
It was her first appearance, but as she was always
late, nobody noticed. When she stopped, just
above us on the stairs, however, we looked up, and
she was holding to the rail and trembling perceptibly.
“Mr. Harbison, will you—can you come
upstairs?” she asked. Her voice was strained,
almost reedy, and her lips were white.
Mr. Harbison stared up at her, with the telephone
box in his hands.
“Why—er—certainly,”
he said, “but, unless it’s very important,
I’d like to fix this talking machine. We
want to make a food record.”
“I’d like to break a food record,”
Max put in, but Bella created a diversion by sitting
down suddenly on the stair just above us, and burying
her face in her handkerchief.
