All breakfast-time she felt like one in a dream. She seemed to be drifting into a new life, which was not new but old; and she almost felt as if she had come home. She was utterly unable to imagine what might be the explanation of this strange experience. She had not a glimmering of the actual truth. She struggled against the feeling which possessed her, and partly overcame it; but it returned again and again during her stay in the house, though with diminished force.
After breakfast, “Cobbler” Horn invited his secretary to attack the accumulated mass of letters which waited for despatch.
“You see, Miss Owen,” he said in half-apology for asking her to begin work so soon, “the pile gets larger every day; and, if we don’t do something to reduce it at once, it will get altogether beyond bounds.”
Miss Owen turned her sparkling dark eyes upon her employer.
“Oh, Mr. Horn,” she exclaimed, as she took her seat at the table, “the sooner we get to work the better! I did not come here to play, you know.”
“Cobbler” Horn poured an armful of unanswered letters down upon the table, in front of his ardent young secretary.
“There’s a snow-drift for you, Miss Owen!” he said.
“Thank you, sir,” was the cheery response, “we must do our best to clear it away.”
Miss Owen was already beginning to feel quite at home with “Cobbler” Horn; and she even ventured at this point, to rally him on the dismay with which he regarded his piles of letters.
“Don’t you think, sir,” she asked, with a radiant smile, “that a little sunshine might help us?”