“Yes, I am. Any little odd jobs you’d like done?”
She returned his glance with one quite as steady.
“There are,” she said.
With that, he promptly took off his coat, and she, equally determined to see the thing through, led him into the dismal front room.
“I want shelves put up,” said she. “Three rows—on this wall. There are boards in the cellar for that purpose.”
Fortunately Jerry was by nature “handy,” and in his younger days had had much experience in building chicken houses and rabbit hutches and such things. With the calmest air in the world he set to work, wondering for what possible reason she could want a triple row of enormous shelves. For some time the portly lady watched him, but that didn’t worry him, for he felt sure that she knew even less than he did about putting up shelves; and at last she went away.
When he was alone, he couldn’t help laughing. It might have ended that way, with Jerry thinking the whole thing a rather idiotic joke, in which he was getting somewhat the worst of it, if something had not happened to change the aspect of the situation.
He was hammering away at a bracket which would—he hoped—support one end of one of those monster shelves, when he heard a light footstep behind him. He turned and saw the incomparable girl.
She smiled in her serious way, and Jerry tried to look equally serious, but did not succeed very well. In the first place, it wasn’t natural to him to be serious, and, in the second place, he was extraordinarily pleased to see the incomparable girl again. He couldn’t help fancying that she shared at least a little in his delight.
Anyhow, she was very friendly toward this strange carpenter. She asked him if he needed anything else for his work. He thanked her earnestly and said that he did not. Then she advanced a little farther into the room, and laid one of her slender little hands on the boards standing against the wall.