“Any minute now,” said Noah, smoothing down his hair with an inky finger. “I—I think the clock is a little fast.” Then as Connie laughed, he jerked up the top of his desk and disappeared behind it.
“Stuffy old place!” said Connie, wandering about the room. “If Mr. Gooch wasn't so stingy he'd have it cleaned up.”
“I wouldn't call a man stingy who had given a library to the law school,” Hattie objected.
“Yes, and he's spent the rest of his life saving every penny to pay himself back for it. He has eaten fifty-two suppers a year at our house for ten years, that's five hundred and twenty suppers, and he's never even treated us to a chocolate sundae!”
“I don't think it's stingy to be economical,” Hattie said with her most superior air.
Noah, who was facing the open door, suddenly began making strange gestures, and violent appeals for silence, but the girls were off on an old argument and did not see him.
“Besides,” Connie was saying conclusively, “he cheats at cards; you know he does.”
“Only at solitaire. I don't see any reason why he shouldn't cheat himself if he wants to. He's all right, even if he is queer, and I think you ought to be ashamed of yourself to talk about him the way you do!”
“How do you do, Harriet?” said Mr. Gooch dryly, entering from the outer room and not glancing at Connie. “A message from your father?”
Connie slipped the note into Hattie's hand and took refuge with Noah behind the desk top.