She stood back from the trunk, flushed and irritated.
“Just sit on this trunk, please. It must be locked to-night.”
Her eye on him was as the eye of a general or a subaltern, impersonal, commanding, imperious.
He met it and stood immovable. In the fifteen years I have known him I had never seen him look so angry.
“Hurry up,” she said sharply. “I’d ask Evie but she’s not heavy enough.”
He answered with icy politeness:
“Miss Harris, I am very sorry, but I’ve already stayed too long. There are other men in the house, who will surely only be too happy to sit on your trunk whenever you choose to command them,” and he opened the door.
“Oh, very well, if you’re going to be so disobliging,” she answered, angry now in her turn. Then to me: “Come over here, Evie, and help. If we both press as hard as we can I think we can do it. I don’t care to wait till the morning. I want this locked now.”
I rose obediently and began to steer my way through the cyclone’s track. Roger came in, shutting the door with a bang.
“Mrs. Drake’s in no condition to make such exertions. She’s been ill and oughtn’t to be asked to do such things. Evie, don’t touch that trunk.”