At dinner time Kurt arrived, and Pen chuckled as she easily read his dismay at the situation.
“He’s foreseeing and dreading all sorts of terrible things I may do or am capable of doing. Just because he is looking for trouble, I have no desire to give it. I’ll play a new role and show him what a tame, good little girl I can be; maybe I’ll like being one and it’ll turn out to be a real reform. It would be awfully odd if he found his pedalled ideal in The Thief!”
She was conscious of his searching eyes upon her. She looked demurely down. In a soft, subdued voice she read little stories to the children, and when their bedtime hour came, she went upstairs with them.
Later she joined him on the library veranda where he was smoking his pipe, for it was one of the few nights when it was warm enough for such indulgence.
She went up to him unfalteringly.
“I have put myself on honor while Mrs. Kingdon is away,” she said gravely. “I will try hard to do as you want me to do, but it will be easier for me if you will trust me.”
Her eyes looked out so very straight, with none of the worldly wisdom he had seen in them the day she had been transferred to his guardianship, that he found himself incapable of harboring any further doubt of her sincerity.
“I will,” he said staunchly; “I will trust you as she does.”
They sat together in the moonlight without further converse and in the reposeful silence a mutual understanding was born.
Presently she went inside and played some old-time airs on the piano with the caressing, lingering touch of those who play by ear.