"If I were you," she remarked demurely, "I'd try staying on my very best behaviour." Her eyes flashed mischief as she said this.
"Does every inquisitive idiot in Deep Harbor know me by sight?"
"Be careful, Ted, how you refer to our upper circles," she laughed. "Of course they know you, silly boy. You buy a factory from one of our prominent business men, come all the way from London, speak to no one, live a mysterious life all by yourself, with a strange piratey-looking cutthroat—"
"Prospero!" I exclaimed.
"Prospero! Delicious name!" she echoed. "Well, you do all these things and then imagine you are invisible. Could any one but a man be so stupid?"
"There does seem to be something in what you say," I gurgled humbly. Her laugh this time was loud and joyous enough to add to Myrtle Boulevard's suspicions.
"Any one with any common sense would have presented his letters of introduction at the beginning."
"How do you know I have any?"
"Oh, dad had the bank look up all your connections, of course, when you borrowed money for the pay roll. He's a director. He told me all about it."
"This is a chatty little village"—I said with a very feeble effort at withering sarcasm.