“You have rather a nice face,” observed the woman dubiously. “And I do hope you’re naturally lively and cheerful; you’ll get along better with him if you are. If he takes a notion to you, he’ll be pretty good most of the time. But if he don’t—— Are you used to children?”
“I have a brother.”
“How old?”
“Six years.”
“Well, I declare! Quite a coincidence. Is your brother an ordinary child?”
“He is perfectly normal, if that is what you mean,” Barbara managed to say. It was being harder than she thought.
“One thing more,” the woman was saying. “You didn’t answer one question I asked. How did you ever come to think of doing anything so strange as selling your services at auction? And why should you demand all the money at once? If your references—your pastor’s letter and others—hadn’t been so satisfactory, we shouldn’t have thought of considering you. But we do want to secure someone who will stay, and of course you’ll be obliged to; though I’m not allowed to bid above a certain sum. Now I shall expect a truthful answer to——”
Mr. Bellows obtruded his puckered face into the room.
“Time’s up, ma’am,” he said authoritatively. “Other bidders waitin’ their opportunity.”
Barbara could not afterward recall all that passed during the intolerable period before the bidding began. She was vaguely aware of women, tall and short, curious, eager, clutching hand-bags, presumably containing large sums of money. There were men, too. The representative of the Boston widower, the young mining engineer, more eager and determined than ever after his short interview with Barbara.