They did not miss the brother. He had followed Bess into the kitchen, and he said he wished to help her. She told him that there was really nothing that he could do, but still he stayed there. He sat on the end of the table, and talked to her.
His conversation was not scholarly. He did not talk about books. He talked about plays, and Bess had never seen anything except a few Shakespearean dramas. He[Pg 497] talked about dancing, and Bess had never danced, except at school. Her particular friends had been very serious girls, and her father was invariably serious; she was not accustomed to frivolous conversation, and she could not answer Mr. Smith. After awhile he gave up and fell silent.
That night, after she had gone to bed, Bess lay awake for a time in the dark. She endeavored to think of the future, and to decide whether she could study shorthand by mail; but her thinking was unaccountably disturbed by the memory of that young man, with his steady, smiling glance and his very insignificant conversation. Somehow, it made her unhappy.
III
The new neighbors worked late into the night, with a great deal of noise, and in the morning a van came with more furniture. Bess went upstairs, to ask if she could help, but Miss Smith thanked her warmly, said that moving meant nothing at all to her, and invited Bess and her father to come up and dine with them that evening notwithstanding the unplaced furniture.
The professor, to his daughter’s surprise, seemed pleased by the invitation.
“It is something of an experience to meet genuine artists,” he said. “It will do us good. Miss Smith is, I consider, a remarkable woman. I had a talk with her yesterday, and the extent of her information is great.”
“She forgot to tell me what time to come,” said Bess; “but if we go up early—a little before six—perhaps I can help her.”
When they went up, it might have been a little before six in the morning, for any sign of dinner to be seen. Miss Smith, in a smock, was busy drawing; Tom Tench was shut up in his room, writing, and all the other rooms were in darkness.
“You won’t mind waiting until I finish this?” she asked. “It’s a design for a book jacket. It’s not at all what they ordered, and probably they won’t take it; but it seems criminal to me to stifle a good idea. Tom Tench won’t be long now. He makes a point of writing at least twenty-five hundred words a day. He will do that much, even if he’s not in the mood, and has to tear it all up.”