“I think, sir,” returned the housekeeper emphatically, “that if anybody bought that child for a fool he wouldn't get his money's worth.”
“Even though she is a Scientist?” added Mr. Evringham, his mustache curving in a smile.
“She's too smart for me. I don't like children to be so smart. The idea of her setting up to teach you Mr. Evringham!”
“That shouldn't be so surprising. I read a long time ago something about certain things being concealed from the wise and prudent and revealed unto babes.”
“Babes!” repeated Mrs. Forbes. “We've been the babes. If that young one can lie in bed with a fever, and wind every one of us around her finger the way she's done to-day, what can we expect when she's up and around?”
The broker laughed. “She's an Evringham, an Evringham!” he said.
“You may laugh, sir, but what do you think of her wheedling me into sending Zeke up, and then getting him off on the sly with that telegram? I faced him down with it to-night, and Zeke isn't any good at fibbing.”
“I'll be hanged if I don't think it was a pretty good thing for me,” rejoined Mr. Evringham, “and money in my pocket. It looked as if I was in for Ballard for a matter of weeks.”
“But the—the—the audacity of it!” protested Mrs. Forbes. “What do you think she said after you and Dr. Ballard had done downstairs? I tried to bring her to a sense of what she'd done, and all she answered was that she had known that God would deliver her out of the snare of the fowler. Now I should like to ask you, Mr. Evringham,” added Mrs. Forbes in an access of outraged virtue, “which of us three do you think she called the fowler?”
“Give it up, I'm sure,” returned the broker; “but I can imagine that we seemed three pretty determined giants for one small girl to outwit.”