"Oh, I'm not busy," she said. "This is one of my loafing days. Since lunch time I've been indulging in my favourite passion. I've been prowling through a secondhand bookstore over on Lexington Avenue, picking up bargains. There's the fruit of my shopping."
She indicated a pile of five or six nibbled-looking volumes in dingy covers resting upon one corner of the low mantelshelf.
"Works on interior decorating?" he guessed.
"Goodness, no! Decorating is my business; this is my pleasure. The top one of the heap—the one bound in red—is all about chess."
"Chess! Did anybody ever write a whole book about chess?"
"I believe more books have been written on chess than on any other individual subject in the world, barring Masonry," she said. "And the next one to it—the yellow-bound one—is a book about old English games; not games of chance, but games for holidays and parties. I was glancing through it in my car on the way here from the shop. It's most interesting. Why, some of the games it tells about were played in England before William the Conqueror landed; at least so the author claims. Did you ever hear of a game called Shoe the Wild Mare? It was very popular in Queen Elizabeth's day. The book yonder says so."
"No, I never heard of it. From the name it sounds as though it might be rather a rough game for indoors," commented Mullinix. "For a busy woman who's made such a big success at her calling, I wonder how you find time to dig into so many miscellaneous subjects."
"I don't call the time wasted," she said. "For example, there's one book in that lot dealing with mushroom culture. It seems there's ever so much to know about mushrooms. Besides, who knows but what some day I might have a wealthy client who would want me to design him a mushroom cellar, combining practicability with the decorative. Then, you see, I would have the knowledge at my finger tips." She smiled at the conceit, busying herself with the tea things.
"Well, I suppose I'm a one-idea-at-a-time sort of person," he said.
"No, you aren't! You only think you are," she amended. "Just now I suppose you are all so wrapped up in the business you mentioned a moment ago that you can't think of anything else."