“Maybe I’d better wait in the hall until you go and tell Miss Flora.”
“Certainly not. Light the gas, please.”
He obeyed, and as the light fell suddenly upon his face she saw that there was a mischievously meditative gleam in his eyes.
Still holding the burnt match in his fingers, he turned to her. “I don’t believe I’ve met you before?” he said.
“I only came to-day. Will you sit down?”
“You—living here?” The caller appeared to be in no hurry to have his arrival announced. He listened a moment to the faint voices above, and seemed reassured.
“Why, yes—I think so. You see, I always live wherever I happen to be.” She smiled brightly, to rob her words of any seeming unfriendliness. She regarded him more in detail. He was a big-bodied man, with a proper tendency to dwindle away neatly from the shoulders down. His hair was of the sort that refuses to be quite nice. It was astonishingly thick and dark, with an occasional glint of silver in it, and it was close-cropped. She liked the way he stood, too; his chest well out, his head back, and as if nothing could disturb his balance. Bonnie May had seen so many men who stood as if they needed propping up, or as if they would be more secure if they had four legs to stand on.
He returned her careful scrutiny, and the look of approval in her eyes brought a ruddier glow to his cheeks and a merrier look to his eyes.
He sat down and held out both his hands, smiling so broadly that she could see many white, lustrous teeth.
She put her hands into his without hesitation. She felt extraordinarily happy.