“It was a surprise,” he replied evenly. His voice and his eyes were inscrutable. He returned my glance steadily. It was infuriating to have gone half-way to meet him, as I had, and then to find him intrenched in his self-sufficiency again. I got up.
“It is unfortunate that our acquaintance has begun so unfavorably,” I remarked, preparing to pass him. “Under other circumstances we might have been friends.”
“There is only one solace,” he said. “When we do not have friends, we can not lose them.”
He opened the door to let me pass out, and as our eyes met, all the coldness died out of his. He held out his hand, but I was hurt. I refused to see it.
“Kit!” he said unsteadily. “I—I’m an obstinate, pig-headed brute. I am sorry. Can’t we be friends, after all?”
“‘When we do not have friends we can not lose them,’” I replied with cool malice. And the next instant the door closed behind me.
It was that night that the really serious event of the quarantine occurred.
We were gathered in the library, and everybody was deadly dull. Aunt Selina said she had been reared to a strict observance of the Sabbath, and she refused to go to bed early. The cards and card tables were put away and every one sat around and quarreled and was generally nasty, except Bella and Jim, who had gone into the den just after dinner and firmly closed the door.
I think it was just after Max proposed to me. Yes, he proposed to me again that night. He said that Jim’s illness had decided him; that any of us might take sick and die, shut in that contaminated atmosphere, and that if he did he wanted it all settled. And whether I took him or not he wanted me to remember him kindly if anything happened. I really hated to refuse him—he was in such deadly earnest. But it was quite unnecessary for him to have blamed his refusal, as he did, on Mr. Harbison. I am sure I had refused him plenty of times before I had ever heard of the man. Yes, it was just after he proposed to me that Flannigan came to the door and called Mr. Harbison out into the hall.
Flannigan—like most of the people in the house—always went to Mr. Harbison when there was anything to be done. He openly adored him, and—what was more—he did what Mr. Harbison ordered without a word, while the rest of us had to get down on our knees and beg.