I've always thought they
were fascinating!"
She badgered him on the way back up the hill that morning, but when
they paused for a moment at the edge of the close-cropped lawn which
rolled back to the stucco and timber house facing the river, she
abandoned her facetiousness.
"Why should there be any--any element of personal danger in this work
you are doing, Mr. O'Mara?" she asked. "And did I do wrong in
mentioning to Mr. Morgan how that man came out of that--place, and
glared so at you?"
His rejoinder should have been very reassuring.
"So Joe has been hinting at that mystery stuff again, has he? After
listening to him one is almost compelled to believe that I run daily a
veritable gauntlet of nameless perils."
Barbara stood, small fists buried in her sweater pockets, studying his
smile of amusement.
"I shouldn't like to believe so," her voice was faintly diffident.
"And you--you haven't accepted my invitation for Friday. May I expect
you? I didn't tell you, but Archie--Archibald Wickersham--will be
there, as well as Garry. So--so you won't be entirely unacquainted."
And then, at those words, his face changed. All in one fleet second,
in spite of the whole morning's quick intimacy of mood and the spirit
of companionship which to her had seemed a delightfully new yet
time-tried thing, Barbara found that she could not read an inch behind
those grave gray eyes.
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