Mrs. Wagner took out her pocket-book and made the new mark.
"Thank you," said Jack. "Now I want something else. I want to know what Mrs. Housekeeper has been saying. I have been seriously alarmed about you."
"Why, Jack?"
"She hasn't bitten you, has she? Oh, they do it sometimes! What lies has she been telling you of me? Oh, they lie in the most abominable manner! What? She has been talking of me in the kindest terms? Then why did she want to get out of my hearing? Ah, they're so infernally deceitful! I do hate mad people."
Mrs. Wagner produced her pocket-book again. "I shall scratch out your mark," she said sternly, "if I hear any more talk of that sort."
Jack gathered his keys together with a strong sense of injury, and put them back in his leather bag. "You're a little hard on me," he said, "when I'm only warning you for your own good. I don't know why it is, you're not as kind to me here, as you used to be in London. And I feel it, I do!" He laid himself down on the window seat, and began to cry.
Mrs. Wagner was not the woman to resist this expression of the poor little man's feeling. In a moment she was at the window comforting him and drying his eyes, as if he had been a child. And, like a child, Jack took advantage of the impression that he had made. "Look at your desk," he said piteously; "there's another proof how hard you are on me. I used to keep the key of your desk in London. You won't trust it to me here."
Mrs. Wagner went to the desk, locked it, and returned to Jack. Few people know how immensely an act of kindness gains in effect, by being performed in silence. Mrs. Wagner was one of the few. Without a word, she opened the leather bag and dropped the key into it. Jack's gratitude rushed innocently to an extreme which it had never reached yet. "Oh!" he cried, "would you mind letting me kiss you?"
Mrs. Wagner drew back, and held up a warning hand. Before she could express herself in words, Jack's quick ear caught the sound of footsteps approaching the door. "Is she coming back?" he cried, still suspicious of Madame Fontaine. Mrs. Wagner instantly opened the door, and found herself face to face with Joseph the footman.
"Do you know, ma'am, when Mr. Keller will be back?" he asked.