Helen Louise's quick eyes spied, through the car window, her father, among the crowd on the platform and she gave a joyful shout. But it was a shout, which although loud and very near, Arethusa never even heard. Her own eyes, star-like and intent, were busy searching that same crowd for her own father.
CHAPTER XI
Just as the music room was primarily Elinor's retreat, so was the library the place which Ross loved best.
It was a long, narrow room; two square rooms had been thrown together to make it, and it was lined, on the longest walls to about half the distance from the ceiling, with low, deep, unglassed book-cases full of books on a bewildering variety of subjects, haphazardly arranged; some of them well worn as to bindings as if much read. A brick fireplace of generous proportions with a high, narrow mantel shelf of brownish red marble occupied most of one of the other, and narrower, walls. A log fire burned there fitfully now, throwing little dancing gleams on the brass andirons and the dark polished floor just in front. All the chairs in the room were broad and deep and enticingly comfortable. An enormous davenport stood at one side of the fireplace, and there was a long, heavy table of carved mahogany directly in front of the hearth. The few rugs in the room were all in dull, subdued tones that melted into the floor unobtrusively.
Here, in the library, Ross spent his days in the arduous labor with which he kept body and soul together; the translation of various bits of the literature of Southern Europe into English. Ross was quite a student in his way and a good deal of a linguist.
But he was not working just at this moment.
At the enormous desk between the two long windows at the end of the room opposite the fireplace, he was reading a detective story and playing with a bronze paper cutter at the same time, banging it up and down on the desk.
Ross loved detective stories as much as any boy who has ever thrilled over them, and Elinor loved to watch him read them. She stood still in the doorway for a moment and watched him now. She could tell by his changing expression just when the story he was reading was sad, just when it was merry, just when the meaning was hard to understand, and just when he began to dislike the way things were working out, almost as well as if he read it aloud to her.
The paper cutter poised in the air for just a second, and his eyebrows drew together in a little puzzled frown. Evidently, things were going badly. Then the paper cutter came down on the desk with a swoop, and his whole face lighted.