“You little angel!” he cried. “I’ve never seen you do that before!”
“I’ve just learned,” said Bess, still laughing.
They had a good deal more to say. They took a very long time in getting a very simple supper; but nobody tried to hurry them. Nobody seemed at all impatient. Indeed, when Bess came in with a tray, they all smiled at her in a new sort of way, as if they, too, had been somehow touched by her gay young laughter.
Nothing could have been more festive than that supper of coffee and corned beef, eaten under a ceiling that still dripped, in[Pg 503] a room with a broken windowpane stuffed with rags, and heaps of charred débris from upstairs piled in the corners. The wind howled outside, but nobody cared.
The professor rose to his feet.
“This,” he said, “is Christmas Day; and in some respects I may say that it is a—for me, personally—a merry one. I should like to take this occasion to say—Mr. Tom Tench, sir, your cousin, Miss Smith, has—er—shown me an example of—of—” He hesitated for a moment. “Mr. Tench, sir!” he said. “Your hand!”
Tom Tench sprang up and took the proffered hand in a vigorous clasp.
“Gayle!” he said. “Gayle! I—I think I’ll run down and take a look at that furnace![Pg 504]”
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