VI
The next morning Miss Fielding slept late, and her breakfast order was, as it had been two days before, prosaic. Then, also, she had slept late. This coincidence struck me and gave me a presentiment. I looked curiously for the first sight of her to confirm or destroy a theory that I had been incubating during my long night hours alone. The fact that, as I ate my breakfast, I could hear her whistling in her room helped along my hypothesis. So did Leah's apparent mental detachment.
Miss Fielding romped into my room at about half-past nine, and with a laugh and a "Good morning, Chet!" pirouetted up to my bed. My theory instantly gained plausibility. Her manner was what I had anticipated. Her dress, also, was significant.
She had on a fussy sort of silk waist, inappropriate, I thought, with her cloth walking-skirt. Her hair was elaborately "marcelled," and she wore bangles that clinked on her wrists; there was the same odor of Santal that I had previously noticed. What was most suggestive was that this get-up was apparently meant to impress me. At least, that was how I interpreted her coquettish smile. I shouldn't care to say that she showed actual poor taste—it was only, I thought, poor taste for her. She needed such adjuncts of fashion so little!
"See here," she said, tossing her head and pointing at me dramatically, "you're getting altogether too lazy! I think that you've been in bed long enough. I'm going to get you down-stairs to-day. The doctor said three or four days in bed would do, and now it's five. How do you feel?" She shook the post of my bed with mock ferocity, as if to expend some surplus energy. There seemed to be an extra ounce of blood in her this morning.
"Oh, I'm game!" I replied. "Nothing would suit me better."
"I'll get the library ready, then; Leah and Uncle Jerdon will help you down. Then you can watch me work, if you don't mind. I'm trying to finish my coffret." She felt thoughtfully of her biceps. "I'll get quite a muscle before I'm through. I shall have driven about twelve hundred nails by the time it's done."
She walked to the door, swinging her arms, and called, "Leah! Come up here! Quick!"
Leah appeared, out of breath, as if, for the moment, she had expected that an accident had happened. She gave a quick apprehensive look about.
"Leah, we're going to get Mr. Castle downstairs to-day. Is Uncle Jerdon about?"