"What do you care about Henderson?" she laughed.
"I care a good deal. Come, now!" It was plain that Anton took this telephone incident very seriously.
"Henderson is a—a party I'm working for," she ventured.
"Then you do know someone by that name? You just said you didn't."
She looked at him reproachfully. "I don't have to know him personally to work for him, do I?"
"What kind of work do you do?"
She hesitated, biting her lips, first the lower, then the full upper one, until they were red like cherries, and all the time trying to imagine what kind of work it could be that she was doing for Henderson. If she only had some faint idea who Henderson was! What a fool she had been to get herself into this tangle!
"You know what the work is, boy, or you can come pretty near to guessing," she answered, with a wise dropping of the eyelids.
"You're making reports to Henderson? Is that it? Don't lie. I heard you on the phone."
Hester clutched at this guiding straw. "Well, what of it? When I came to Ippingford I—I didn't know you and—it was a—a chance to pick up some easy money." She was feeling her way, wondering where this glib improvisation would lead her.