“Or whom?”
“You know! But,” she brightened again, “here’s something else yet! I’m on the job day and night, you know, and, if you inquire of me, I’d just as lief spill it to you, that Miss Olive is a whole lot interested in that fascinating Mr. Rivers!”
“Oh, now,” and Norah looked reproof at the saucy, smiling girl, “Miss Raynor is the fiancée of Amory Manning.”
“Nixy! she told me she never was engaged to Mr. Manning. And when I tease her about Mr. Rivers, she blushes the loveliest pink you ever saw, and says, ‘Oh, Zizi, don’t be a silly!’ but then she sits and waits for me to be a silly again!”
“But she hasn’t seen Rivers half a dozen times,” I said, smiling at Zizi’s flight of imagination.
“That’s nothing,” she scoffed; “if ever there was a case of love at first sight, those two have got it! They don’t really know it themselves yet, but if Amory Manning wants Miss Olive, he’d better come out of hiding and win her while the winning’s good! And it’s my belief he’d be too late now! And here’s a straw to show which way that wind blows. The picture of Mr. Manning that was on Miss Olive’s dresser has disappeared!”
“That may not mean anything,” I said, for I didn’t think it right to encourage Zizi’s romancing.
“But I asked Miss Olive about it, and she hesitated and stammered, and never did say why she had put it away. And, too, you ought to see her eyes smile when she expects Mr. Rivers to call! He’s making a lace pattern for her, and they have to discuss it a lot! Ohé, oho!”
The mischievous little face took on a gentle, tender look and Norah smiled with the sympathy of one who, like all the rest of the world, loves a lover.
“But,” I said, musingly, “none of this brings us any nearer to the discovery of Amos Gately’s murderer, or to the discovery of Amory Manning,—which are the two ends and aims of our present existence.”