Feeling a bit raw over his desertion, I gave up my walk and decided to spend the rest of the afternoon at the library.
At the edge of the reading-room I found Madge Hubert brandishing a ferocious-looking paper-knife over the perfectly helpless new magazines. With a little cry of delight she summoned me to her by the wave of a Science Monthly. Looking over her shoulder I beheld with equal delight that the canny old Science paper had stuck in Sagner's great, ugly face for a frontispiece. At arm's length, with opening and narrowing eyes, I studied the perfect, clever likeness: the convict-cropped hair; the surly, aggressive, relentlessly busy features; the absurd, overwrought, deep-sea sort of eyes. "Great Heavens, Miss Hubert," I said, "did you ever see such a funny-looking man?"
The girl winced. "Funny?" she gasped. "Funny? Why, I think Bertus Sagner is the most absolutely fascinating-looking man that I ever saw in my life." She stared at me in astonishment.
To hide my emotions I fled to the history room. Somewhat to my surprise Mrs. Lennart and her little lad were there, delving deep into some thrilling grammar-school problem concerning Henry the Eighth. I nodded to them, thought they saw me, and slipped into a chair not far behind them. There was no one else in the room. Maybe my thirst for historical information was not very keen. Certainly every book that I touched rustled like a dead, stale autumn leaf. Maybe the yellow bird in the acacia tree just outside the window teased me a little bit. Anyway, my eyes began only too soon to stray from the text-books before me to the little fluttering wisp of Mrs. Lennart's hair that tickled now and then across the lad's hovering face. I thought I had never seen a sweeter picture than those two cuddling, browsing faces. Surely I had never seen one more entrancingly serene.
"Oh, I wish I had a sister," fretted the boy
Then suddenly I saw the lad push back his books with a whimper of discontent.
"What is it?" asked his mother. I could hear her words plainly.
"Oh, I wish I had a sister," fretted the boy.
"Why?" said the mother in perfectly happy surprise.