"We think backwards at times," commented Miss Ocky. She reclaimed her colorful souvenir of the East, then glanced up as the study door opened. "Hello, Simon. I expect you will sleep easier to-night; no fear of fire bugs in a rain like this!"
He grunted something unintelligible, and stared at Copley standing there in the parlor in his raincoat. The young man returned the stare with expressionless face. Neither he nor his father spoke, and in a moment the tanner left the room.
Miss Ocky was as good as her word the following morning. She marched cross-country to the Graham house, some half-mile distant, and had a long and enlightening conversation with Sheila. She had met the girl several times and approved of her highly, and when she left her finally to return home her good opinion of Miss Graham was in nowise diminished. The young woman, if she were not mistaken, had just the qualities needed to make a useful citizen out of a husband like Copley whose chief defect was clearly a lack of decision. He wanted starching, that was it.
She bore homeward a book that she had borrowed from Sheila, and though it only wanted twenty minutes to lunch time, she neither went to her room to freshen up nor sought her nephew to make a hasty report on the result of her embassy. She betook herself instead to the study, and there was a malicious twinkle in her eye as she tapped on the closed door. She obeyed a gruff command to enter.
Varr had made the best of his period of enforced idleness by working on a batch of order-books that he had brought from his office. He was busy with them now, and he looked as displeased as he was surprised by Ocky's interruption.
"What do you want?" he snapped irritably.
"I've picked up some information that I thought you'd like to hear, Simon. How is your nerve this morning? I've just been to call on Sheila Graham and she fairly made my blood curdle."
"Serves you right. Mine curdles when I even think of her." He frowned. "Why did you go to see her?"
"I promised to take her a recipe for a cous-cous I described to her the other day. Anyway, I like her, even if you don't. But that has nothing to do with our muttons! While I was chatting with her I happened to mention our experience yesterday with the monk—"
"You did! What in the world for?"