"If I think him fit! What about you?"
"How can I judge? It's for you to say."
Murray looked sharply at her, in the shaded light of the electric bulbs. He smiled, for in spite of her remarkably quiet manner, her fingers, unconsciously twisting and untwisting her delicate handkerchief, were, as he put it to himself, "giving her away." He had an idea that it mattered a good deal to his sister what Peter Bell's future might be, although he was confident that there was no understanding between them.
If he knew Peter, that young man was not the one to ask to marry a rich man's daughter until his own feet were on substantial ground. But that Peter cared, and cared very deeply, for Murray Townsend's sister, Murray was well assured.
"It's for me to say, is it?" he went on, wickedly persisting in his theme. "But it's for you to think! How about having him round our office every day--desk next mine--giving you dictation, now and then, maybe, when it suits me to put it off on him? Think you could stand it? Look up at him as coolly as you do at me? Could you, Miss Townsend, stenographer? See here, what are you jumping up for?"
"Because you are getting impudent," responded Miss Townsend, turning her head so that her face was in shadow. Her heart was beating so quickly she was afraid her brother would recognise the fact. It had been an agitating evening all through, and now this last suggestion was rather more than she could face with composure.
"I 've a notion P. B. himself could put up with the situation," went on Murray, watching her. "His dictation might be a trifle flurried at first, and he might forget himself now and then, and ignore those purely businesslike relations which should always exist between a business man and his stenographer. But I 've no doubt that by a judicious course of snubbing you could----"
But he was talking to the empty air. By a hasty flight and the abrupt closing of a door, his sister had put herself out of range.
CHAPTER X
PETER PREFERS THE PORCH