For a moment, as we came into the book-room he had stood looking gravely down; now he gave me a sudden frank, merry look and laughed. “Oh,” he said, “it's absurd, too absurd, you know,—your being a housekeeper, I mean. You're just playing at it, are n't you?”
“Indeed, Mr. Dabney,” I said, “I am not. I am very little likely to play at anything. I am earnestly trying to earn my living. The card catalogue is over there between the front windows. Is there anything else?”
“Was I rude?” he asked with an absurdly boyish air; “I am sorry. I did n't mean to be. But surely you can't mind people's noticing it?”
I fell into this little trap. “Noticing what?” I could n't forbear asking him.
“Why,” said he, “the utter incongruity of your being a housekeeper at all. I believe that that is what frightened Robbie.”
There was a strange note in his voice now, an edge. Was he trying to be disagreeable? I could not make out this young man. I moved away.
“Miss Gale,”—he was perfectly distant and casual again,—“I'll have to detain you just a moment. This bookcase is locked, you see—”
“I'll ask Mrs. Brane.”
I came back in a few minutes with the key. Mr. Dabney was busy with the card catalogue, but, for some reason,—I have always had a catlike sense in such matters,—I felt that he had only just returned to this position, and that he wanted me to believe that he had spent the entire time of my absence there.
“These other housekeepers,” he said, “were n't very earnest about earning their living, were they? Mrs. Brane was telling me—”
“Oh,” I smiled, rather surprised that Mrs. Brane had been so confidential. To me she had never mentioned the other housekeepers. “They were very nervous women. You see, I am not.”
He turned the key about in his hand, looked down, then up at me demurely. He had the most disarming and trust-inspiring look.
“No,” he said, “you are not nervous. It's a great thing to have a steady nerve. You're not easily
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