"Oh, I am, am I? Well, I'll tell you a secret: I'm not quite so young as, apparently, I look. I don't wear my hair a little thin on top because I like that style, particularly. But, even if she's right, and I have no practice—no income—how could that——?"
Katherine turned her face away, unable to meet his searching eyes.
He spoke again at once. "The fact is, you're not giving it to me straight. You're trying to soften the dull thud, or something. Now, be honest. Speak the truth, like a little man. What's the reason I'm persona non grata with Madam Crewe? Speak out. It'll be over in a minute, and then you'll feel much better, and so shall I."
"It's too humiliating to have to repeat it," Katherine fairly wailed. "She's old. She doesn't realize how things sound. She said—I'm quoting, word for word—repeating every foolish syllable, but you will have it. She said: 'I know the Ballard tribe. I knew it, when I was young. It injured me and mine, and it will you, if you don't leave it alone. Leave this fellow alone, and see he leaves you. Understand?'"
"So! Well, that sounds 'kinda moreish,' as Mrs. Slawson says. I wish you'd go on. She didn't tell you what the Ballard tribe was guilty of? No? Then I'll have to look into it, and find out for myself. I never was much on genealogy, but if we've a real, sure-nuff villain in the family—a villain whose yellow streak is like to crop out unto the third and fourth generations—why, I'm on to his trail. I'm going to hunt him down. It'll be something to amuse me, while, as you say, I'm waiting for patients."
CHAPTER VI
"You take up every little point in the edge, an' pin it down to the frame, like this. See! Doncher stretch the lace so tight it'll tear on you. Gentle now! Watch me, an' then you folla suit."
Martha had pressed Cora into service, to do apprentice-duty; and was instructing her in the gentle art of curtain-cleansing.
From a far corner of the garret-room, where, for convenience and safety, the frames had been set, Flicker, the dog, sat watching with intent expression. Occasionally, when one or the other of his friends seemed on the point of noticing him, he wagged an impartial, responsive tail.
"I want to do this job so good it couldn't be done better," Mrs. Slawson observed, her skilful fingers plying away busily as she spoke. Cora sniffed.