"I do hope you want to see me especially!" she said brightly.
The children, disappointed, relaxed their attention.
Mr. De Guenther rose slowly and neatly from his seat beside the rather bored Isaac Rabinowitz, who dived into his book again with alacrity.
"Good afternoon, Miss Braithwaite," he said in the amiably precise voice which matched so admirably his beautifully precise movements and his immaculate gray spats. "Yes. In the language of our young friend here, 'I am the guy.'"
Phyllis giggled before she thought. Some people in the world always make your spirits go up with a bound, and the De Guenther pair invariably had that effect on her.
"Oh, Mr. De Guenther!" she said, "I am shocked at you! That's slang!"
"It was more in the nature of a quotation," said he apologetically. "And how are you this exceedingly unpleasant day, Miss Braithwaite? We have seen very little of you lately, Mrs. De Guenther and I."
The Liberry Teacher, gracefully respectful in her place, wriggled with invisible impatience over this carefully polite conversational opening. He had come down here on purpose to see her—there must be something going to happen, even if it was only a request to save a seven-day book for Mrs. De Guenther! Nobody ever wanted something, any kind of a something, to happen more wildly than the Liberry Teacher did that bored, stickily wet Saturday afternoon, with those tired seven years at the Greenway Branch dragging at the back of her neck, and the seven times seven to come making her want to scream. So few things can possibly happen to you, no matter how good you are, when you work by the day. And now maybe something—oh, please, the very smallest kind of a something would be welcomed!—was going to occur. Maybe Mrs. De Guenther had sent her a ticket to a concert; she had once before. Or maybe, since you might as well wish for big things while you're at it, it might even be a ticket to an expensive seat in a real theatre! Her pleasure-hungry, work-heavy blue eyes burned luminous at the idea.
"But I really shouldn't wish," she reminded her prancing mind belatedly. "He may only have come down to talk about the weather. It mayn't any of it be true."
So she stood up straight and gravely, and answered very courteously and holding-tightly all the amiable roundabout remarks the old gentleman was shoving forward like pawns on a chessboard before the real game begins. She answered with the same trained cheerfulness she could give her library children when her head and her disposition ached worst; and even warmed to a vicious enthusiasm over the state of the streets and the wetness of the damp weather.