She glanced at him with a touch of bewilderment, and glanced away again, turning toward the door. Surely he had not always been like this....
"Mr. Avery will think I'm lost," said Cally.
However, Mr. V.V. successfully checked her departure, saying:
"I'm sure you can be of the realest help to the Settlement, Miss Heth, if you care to be." And, then, veering abruptly, he said with his air of making a plunge: "But I must take this opportunity to speak to you of another matter. A matter which, I fear, will be disagreeable to you."
That sufficiently arrested her; she stood looking at him, with a conflict of sensations within. Faces of Settlementers appeared in the door, looked in at the bare room, passed from view again. The tall young man in the new suit pushed back his hair, with the quaint gesture he had.
"You once said," he continued, in a voice of light hardness, "that I brought you nothing but trouble. That seems to continue true, though perhaps you won't regard this as so--so serious...."
Trouble? More trouble for Cally Heth?
"Why--what do you mean?"
"The question of the Heth Works--has come up again. That, at least, is the particular application. Of course many other factories are involved."
The girl was completely taken aback. "Why, I don't understand. What has come up?"