“Have you noticed anything unusual about Polton?”
She nodded emphatically, and cast a furtive glance over her shoulder in his direction.
“What is it?” I asked in the same low tone.
She took another precautionary glance, and then leaning towards me with an expression of exaggerated mystery, whispered:
“He has cut his eyelashes off.”
I gazed at her in amazement, and was about to put a further question, but she held up a warning forefinger and turned again to her work. However, my curiosity was now at boiling-point. As soon as Polton returned to his bench, I slipped off my stool and sauntered over to it on the pretence of seeing how his wax cast was progressing.
Marion’s report was perfectly correct. His eyelids were as bare of lashes as those of a marble bust. And this was not all. Now that I came to look at him critically, his eyebrows had a distinctly moth-eaten appearance. He had been doing something to them, too.
It was an amazing affair. For one moment I was on the point of demanding an explanation, but good sense and good manners conquered the inquisitive impulse in time. Returning to my stool I cast an enquiring glance at Marion, from whom, however, I got no enlightenment but such as I could gather from a most alluring dimple that hovered about the corner of her mouth and that speedily diverted my thoughts into other channels.
My two companions continued for some time to work silently, leaving me to my meditations—which concerned themselves alternately with Polton’s eyelashes and the dimple aforesaid. Suddenly Marion turned to me and asked:
“Has Mr. Polton told you that we are all to have a holiday to-morrow?”