“Everything, so far as I’m concerned, Mrs. Lawson. When I’ve been walking at night, I always find them in the morning beside the bed, but pointing toward it. I evidently slip them off before I get back into bed, and—”
“I’m beginning to think you are quite a clever girl, Janet.”
“Oh, thank you,” said Dorothy with a guilelessness that was sheer camouflage. “Has anybody been saying I’m stupid? I’ve always stood high in my classes at school.”
“Oh, not stupid, child—but nervous—perhaps a little unbalanced, especially this past week.”
Dorothy raised her heavy lashes and looked Mrs. Lawson squarely in the face. This might be a test she was undergoing and it probably was; but here was a heaven sent chance to stir up discord in the enemy’s camp. She must work up to it gradually.
“I know that I was nervous and upset past all endurance.” She leaned forward, her hands on the arms of the chair. “How would you like your father to lock you in your bedroom for a week, without ever coming to see you, or giving you any explanation for such outrageous treatment? Am I a child to be handled like that? To be shipped up here to strangers, whether I wanted to go or not? How would you feel about it, Mrs. Lawson, if you were me? Don’t say you would submit to it sitting down.”
“But I am taking you on as my secretary,” the lady hedged. “Offering you a good position for which you’ll be paid twenty dollars a week. That’s not to be thought of lightly, especially in these times.”
“But it doesn’t seem to strike you that I might like to have something to say about it,” Dorothy replied calmly. “As for the salary—that’s no inducement. My mother left me five thousand a year. I came into the income on my last birthday, so you see I have nearly a hundred dollars a week, whether I work or not.”
“I didn’t know that, of course,” Mrs. Lawson admitted and none too graciously. “Your father wants you to be here while he’s away. I hope you aren’t going to be difficult, Janet.”
“I hope not, Mrs. Lawson. I shall be glad to stay here for a while and do the work you’d planned for me; but if I do, it must be as a guest and not as a paid dependant.”