“I suppose so. Put the book on that upper step.”
“It is a French novel,” he went on; “but it is a good one. Pierre Loti’s ‘Pêcheur d’Islande.’”
“Is it in French?”
“Yes.”
She made a wry face at him.
“You have been taught that language, which is more than I have,” he said; “I read it in English. Come, run over a few pages of the French to me.”
She shook her head and he slapped the book down on the table. “I don’t think much of your gratitude. Here am I half ill, or ‘sick,’ as you say in Rubicon Meadows, and you won’t do as much for me as you do for strangers.”
“What do I do for strangers?” she asked, falteringly, and stretching her neck around the door-post.
“You drove Miss Marsden’s headache away the other day. She told me.”
“Does your head ache? Could I do it any good?” she asked, wistfully, reëntering the room.