Her tone was crisp and staccato. In her breath there was the syncopated halt which he afterward came to associate with the actress, Mrs. Fiske. She might be nervous; or she might suffer from the heart.
For the first few seconds he was too agitated to know exactly what to do. He had been looked at and called Tad again, this time probably by Tad's mother. He rose to his height of six feet two. The lady started back.
"Why, what have you been doing to yourself? What are you standing on? What makes you so tall?"
"I'm afraid there's some mistake, ma'am."
She broke in with a kind of petulance. "Oh, Tad, no nonsense! I'm tired. I'm not in the mood for it."
Both gauntlets peeled off, she flung them on the desk. With a motion as rapid as her speech she stepped toward a window and looked out over the Embankment.
"It's going to be noisy and dusty for you here. The stream of cars is incessant."
Being now beyond the desk, she caught the fullness of his stature. Her left hand went up with a startled movement. She gave a little gasp.
"Oh! You frightened me. You're not standing on anything."