"You have all your old ingratiating tricks of speech," she told him. "Really, nowadays, you ought to be steadying down a little, Mr. Opdyke."
"And thinking on my latter end?" he queried, although he flushed a little at her words. "It's not profitable to meditate upon a blank monotony, you know."
Swiftly she bent forward, resting her elbow on her white linen knee, her chin on her white silk palm.
"But why let it be monotonous?" she demanded.
Reed made a wry face, ostensibly at his own situation, actually at the brutally frank question from what was, in fact, a total stranger.
"I really don't see how I well can help it, Mrs. Brenton," he said quietly.
Lifting her chin from her palm, she clasped her gloves in her lap, and looked down at her host with manifest encouragement.
"Only by lifting yourself above it, Mr. Opdyke," she enlightened him.
Reed smiled grimly.
"I'm very heavy; it would take too large a derrick," he replied. "How is Brenton, to-day?"