“Oh,” she whispered, “you’re just as bad as all the rest of ’em. A good-looking man comes in the door and your brains fly out the window!”
Miss Cornelia quelled her with a gesture and turned back to the young man. He was standing just where she had left him, his cap in his hands—but, while her back had been turned, his eyes had made a stealthy survey of the living-room—a survey that would have made it plain to Miss Cornelia, if she had seen him, that his interest in the Fleming establishment was not merely the casual interest of a servant in his new place of abode. But she had not seen and she could have told nothing from his present expression.
“Have you had anything to eat lately?” she asked in a kindly voice.
He looked down at his cap. “Not since this morning,” he admitted as Billy answered the bell.
Miss Cornelia turned to the impassive Japanese. “Billy, give this man something to eat and then show him where he is to sleep.”
She hesitated. The gardener’s house was some distance from the main building, and with the night and the approaching storm she felt her own courage weakening. Into the bargain, whether this stranger had lied about his gardening or not, she was curiously attracted to him.
“I think,” she said slowly, “that I’ll have you sleep in the house here, at least for tonight. Tomorrow we can—the housemaid’s room, Billy,” she told the butler. And before their departure she held out a candle and a box of matches.
“Better take these with you, Brooks,” she said. “The local light company crawls under its bed every time there is a thunderstorm. Good night, Brooks.”
“Good night, ma’am,” said the young man smiling. Following Billy to the door, he paused. “You’re being mighty good to me,” he said diffidently, smiled again, and disappeared after Billy.
As the door closed behind them, Miss Cornelia found herself smiling too. “That’s a pleasant young fellow—no matter what he is,” she said to herself decidedly, and not even Lizzie’s feverish “Haven’t you any sense taking strange men into the house? How do you know he isn’t the Bat?” could draw a reply from her.