“I think you might possibly fall,” he said. “Would you mind sitting down?”
She did as he suggested with a prompt and sweet spirit of obedience. “I’m afraid I was careless,” she said. Then, looking over more guardedly, she added: “I’ve got a notion to drop my programme down on that old duck’s bald head.”
Baron looked down into the parquet. An elderly gentleman, conspicuously bald-headed, sat just beneath them. Something about the shining dome was almost comical. Yet he turned to the child coldly. He marvelled that he had not detected a pert or self-conscious expression of countenance to accompany the words she had spoken. But she was looking into his eyes quite earnestly.
He turned his face away from her for an instant, and then, with an air of having worked out a problem——
“I don’t believe I would,” he said.
“It might frighten him?” she suggested.
“Not that. He might not think it very polite.”
She looked at him studiously a little, her earnest eyes seeming to search his soul. Then she ventured upon a story:
“I got on a street-car with Miss Barry to-day, and we sat down on a seat with a fat woman; and, believe me, the big thing nearly squeezed the gizzard out of me.”
Her eyes grew wide with excitement as she achieved the climax. She waited for his comment.