As I was finishing breakfast, Anita came in. She had evidently slept well, and I regarded that as ominous. At her age, a crisis means little sleep until a decision has been reached. I rose, but her manner warned me not to advance and try to shake hands with her.
“I have asked Alva to stop with me here for a few days,” she said, formally.
“Alva!” said I, much surprised. She had not asked one of her own friends; she had asked a girl she had met less than two days before, and that girl my partner’s daughter.
“She was here yesterday morning,” Anita explained. And I now wondered how much Alva there was in Anita’s firm stand against her parents.
“I’m glad you like her,” said I. “Why don’t you take her down to our place on Long Island? Everything’s ready for you there, and I’m going to be busy the next few days—busy day and night.”
She reflected. “Very well,” she assented, presently. And she gave me a puzzled glance she thought I did not see—as if she were wondering whether the enemy was not hiding a new and deeper plot under an apparently harmless suggestion.
“Then I’ll not see you again for several days,” said I, most business-like. “If you want anything, there will be Monson out at the stables, where he can’t annoy you. Or you can get me on the ‘long distance.’ Good-by. Good luck.”
And I nodded carelessly and friendlily to her, and went away, enjoying the pleasure of having startled her into visible astonishment. “There’s a better game than icy hostility, you very young lady,” said I to myself, “and that game is friendly indifference.”
Alva would be with her. So she was secure for the present, and my mind was free for “finance.”