“I should like to be,” he said, colouring at his own temerity.
“Well, it isn’t so difficult. We’re really rather a companionable family.”
He gasped a little at the dazzling vista the words suggested.
“I don’t know what I should have done,” she went on, “if I had had to sit here so long without any one to talk to or anything to read. Oh, you have a book there,” she added, noticing the little book which was lying open face downward beside the key. “What is it?”
“This,” answered Allan, laughing and picking up the thin little volume bound in black, “is the book of rules. I’m afraid it wouldn’t interest you. But I have a splendid one in my pocket.”
He went to his coat and got it out.
“Have you ever read it?” he asked as he handed it to her.
She glanced at the title.
“Les Misérables,” she read, making rather a botch of it. “What does that mean?”