“I have not been engaged in a very honorable employment,” he said when he was left alone. “Baiting an innocent girl has not heretofore been one of my pastimes; but I wanted to find out—and she has teased me and braved me as no other woman has ever done. She loves me.” And with a deep flush of gratification he drew on his gloves and left the room. “Hereafter her position in my house will be very different. Perhaps she may not leave us—who knows?” And with a growing conviction in his mind that there were things in the world of more interest than money-making, he drove to his office.
CHAPTER XXV
ZILLA’S ROSEBUD
Miss Zilla Camperdown sat on the top step of the second staircase in the house of her adoption, carefully nursing a small parcel done up in white tissue paper, and watching patiently the closed door of a bedroom beyond her.
At last the door opened, and Dr. Camperdown appeared. “How do I look?” he asked, surveying her with a smile so broad and ample that her small form was fairly enveloped by it.
In speechless delight she caught him by the hand, and leading him back into his room, devoured with her eyes every line of his figure.
“How do I look?” he said again, but the child, as if words failed her to describe the perfection of the sight, waved him toward the full length reflection of himself in the pier-glass between his windows.
He gazed complacently at it, and saw a closely cropped, large, but finely shaped sandy head, a trimmed moustache, and a new suit of evening clothes that fitted admirably his strong and powerfully built figure. “Look like a dandy, Zilla,” he muttered. “Body’s all right, so it doesn’t matter about the ugly face.”
“You’re a bouncer,” she said beatifically. “There’ll not be one like you at the toe-skippin’.”
“At the what, Zilla?” he asked, twisting his neck in order to get a view of his coat tails.
“The dance,” she said hastily. “There’ll be women there, I suppose. Don’t let them run their eyes after you, Dr. Brian.”