"You," said he, "are more used to insulting women than I am."
Mysinger flung up a deprecating hand. "Tut, tut, my dear sir! Talk of that sort does no good whatever, I assure you. You would do well to look at the matter in a sensible way, and believe that I speak—Here! What're you doing there?"
The principal had suddenly heard a strange sound: the click of his own key in his own lock, in fine. At the same time, his visitor was observed to be regarding him with a new and peculiar intentness, arresting and significant. And his only reply to his host's indignant inquiry was to drop the key in question in his coat-pocket.
Now Mary's old conqueror, and his own, had straightened from that lounging swagger. His voice rang more angrily: "You—! What do you think you're up to, anyway—?"
"I think I'm going to beat you to a pulp," said the author,—"you puppy!"
And he started forward with a kind of bound, like one who goes to fill, at last, a long-felt need.
XXIII
Mary Wing was considered a reliable person. When she announced that she would clean out an office closet on a certain day, you could make your plans on the thing's being done. And to-day—if her usual principles might have weakened a little—Mary was further bound by the definite engagement she had made. As Charles had reflected, a demoted grammar-school teacher could not walk in and out of a principal's office like one who had some rights there.
Mary had not remained at the Flowers' interminably, after all. She had entered the High School before Charles Garrott had arrived at Olive Street, and had been upstairs for half an hour, when Charles, following on to help her, strode through the great bronze doors. Nevertheless, she was a full hour behind the time mentioned to Mr. Johnson Geddie over the telephone, and this increased her hope that her only too obliging successor would not be found waiting for her. However, Mr. Geddie was found waiting for her; very much so, in fact. Nothing could have exceeded the exuberance of his courtesy, and nothing could have been less welcome.