She stood in the doorway a second, watching his perceptions dawn.
"Hel-lo!" he said, finally, uncrossing a knee grown slightly corpulent and his rather small eyes crinkling to slits. "Hel-lo!"
She was arch and laughed back.
"A bad penny, you see."
He swung a chair toward her without rising.
"Turned up, didn't you? Good."
She seated herself, with that coquetry of hers which she could force on occasion, feeling his glance as it ran over her dawning shabbiness as searingly as a flame. It darted on downward to her feet, and because that very day the leather in her right shoe had cracked, showing a grin of white lining, she wound that foot up around the chair rung.
"I took sick—that time," she explained, fatuously.
He lifted her hand, bending back each finger to match his words.
"You are a naughty girl. Why did you run away?"