"And when you deliver them to Miss Burgdorf," he said, scribbling an address on a card which he took from his pocket, "you might speak to her in a general way of your work, if you care to do so. For my part," he concluded, "I'm very glad to know of someone who does this kind of thing."
Before he left Rachel, he inquired where she and her grandfather were living and the odd look of gratification deepened on his face.
"I needn't have told him, I suppose," she thought regretfully as she walked home; "he may come there."
CHAPTER IV
THE UNEXPECTED HAPPENS
A pompous-looking butler escorted Rachel through a vestibule, and pointed her to a seat in the dining room. It was evident from his manner that she should have applied at the basement entrance.
A group of workmen were busy setting up an immense table. They kept pushing the sections together and drawing them apart. The polished surfaces of the wood filled the room with reflected light. A maid who stood by looked appealingly at the butler.
"It isn't the table that was ordered," she moaned. She glanced at a clock which seemed, with its fluted columns and Gothic spires, a sardonic spirit in that rich and disordered room. Its monotonous tick-tock, tick-lock, scattered confusion, bewilderment, madness.
"Eleven!" she cried in tones of deepest tragedy, "and not a flower!"
Other servants entered bearing silver and glass. A footman came in with a great palm, and bending, with shoulders on the strain, placed it directly in the path of a hurrying maid. Some one dropped a goblet; that showered into a million minute particles like shining tears. Every movable object was shifted countless times and remained, according to its nature, glittering, wavering, quivering for some instants thereafter. A bronze Narcissus exhibited his grace at an unusual angle. In such a time of rearrangement who has not observed how art objects gain in beauty?