Culpepper came across to Selina presently and leaned over the back of her chair and spoke softly to her. His breath touched her cheek and her pretty ear. Her heart leaped, treacherous, traitorous heart! And the blood beat in her throat!
"Honey, when you going to let me come and talk to you? School's over next week and I'll have to go home. I can't go on finding excuses for hanging around."
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Selina and Maud found themselves more and more thrilled with their work under Mrs. Bruce and Mrs. Higginson.
"It's the virus of content for one thing," said Maud grandly, "we are occupied, and then, too, of course, it's a cause."
There were varying happenings which went with the cause. The business as the days went on, so overcrowded the library, that Aunt Juanita and Selina and the especial medium they worked in, newspaper articles to be compiled, and proofs of circulars from the printers to be corrected, overflowed into the dining-room and onto the dining-table. Mrs. Higginson and Maud in the library folded and directed and stamped all this data in its final form.
Everyone was in earnest and the work engrossing. "You'll stay here to lunch," Aunt Juanita would direct. "There's no time to be wasted going off to hunt food." And the impatience in her voice for any quest so unreasonable and unnecessary as one for food, kept anybody from going.
Nor did conveniences when they were not conveniences carry any weight with her. "No, certainly you can't have the dining-table," she told Hester on an occasion when they all did stay for lunch, and that person, cloth in hand, presented herself to set this piece of furniture for the meal. It was quite as if Hester had asked for something as irregular and preposterous as somebody's nose or ear. "Don't you see Miss Selina and I are using it? That it is piled with our papers? Put the food in dishes and set it around. Why ask me where?" exasperatedly. "Anywhere. We'll help ourselves when we get ready."