But the man intercepted her. Catching her playfully by the arm he tried to draw her toward him.
"You're pretty as a June rose to-day," he laughed.
Hartmann, instinctively, had half-risen from his chair. The girl, noting his movement and the frown gathering on his face, checked her impulse to retort, quietly disengaged herself from the newcomer's familiar grasp, and ran up the short stair flight that led into the gallery.
In no way offended, the man glanced after her with another short laugh, then turned to Hartmann.
"Where's my uncle?" he asked.
Hartmann looked up with elaborate slowness from the notes he was making of the newly opened mail. His eyes at last rested on the dapper figure before him, with the impersonal, faintly irritated gaze one might bestow on a yelping puppy.
"Mr. Grimm is outside," he answered. "He's watching my father spray the plum trees. The black knot's getting ahead of us this year."
"I wonder," grumbled Frederik, lounging across to the window, "if it's possible once a year to ask a simple question of any inmate of this cursedly dreary old place without getting a botanical answer."
"That's what we are here for—those of us that work," said Hartmann, returning to his note making.
"Work, work, work!" mocked Frederik. "When I inherit my beloved uncle's fortune, I shall buy up all the dictionaries and have that wretched word crossed out of them."