I answered by an affirmative motion of my head. I was still speechless. The girl sauntered in her cool way to the fire-place, and, taking up the tongs, returned with them to the book-case.
“Here’s where the book fell,” she said—“in the space between the book-case and the wall. I’ll have it out in no time.”
I waited without moving a muscle, without uttering a word.
She approached me with the tongs in one hand and with a plainly bound volume in the other.
“Is that the book?” she said. “Open it, and see.”
I took the book from her.
“It is tremendously interesting,” she went on. “I’ve read it twice over—I have. Mind you, I believe he did it, after all.”
Did it? Did what? What was she talking about? I tried to put the question to her. I struggled—quite vainly—to say only these words: “What are you talking about?”
She seemed to lose all patience with me. She snatched the book out of my hand, and opened it before me on the table by which we were standing side by side.
“I declare, you’re as helpless as a baby!” she said, contemptuously. “There! Is that the book?”