“How do you know that? And how much more do you know?”
“No more. A man on the train reported your initials from your baggage.”
“I’ll feel ever so much better when I have that bag. Is there a hotel near here?”
“A sort of one at Manzanita. It isn’t very clean. But there’ll be a train through to-night and I’ll get you space on that. I’d better get a doctor for you first, hadn’t I?”
“No, indeed! All I need is some fresh things.”
Banneker set off at a brisk pace. He found the extravagant little traveling-case safely closed and locked, and delivered it outside his own door which was also closed and, he suspected, locked.
“I’m thinking,” said the soft voice of the girl within. “Don’t let me interrupt your work.”
Beneath, at his routine, Banneker also set himself to think; confused, bewildered, impossibly conjectural thoughts not unmingled with semi-official anxiety. Harboring a woman on company property, even though she were, in some sense, a charge of the company, might be open to misconceptions. He wished that the mysterious Io would declare herself.
At noon she did. She declared herself ready for luncheon. There was about her a matter-of-fact acceptance of the situation as natural, even inevitable, which entranced Banneker when it did not appall him. After the meal was over, the girl seated herself on a low bench which Banneker had built with his own hands and the Right-and-Ready Tool Kit (9 T 603), her knee between her clasped hands and an elfish expression on her face.
“Don’t you think,” she suggested, “that we’d get on quicker if you washed the dishes and I sat here and talked to you?”