Page:A Wild-Goose Chase - Balmer - 1915.djvu/43

Rh shown that her attraction to him was continuing; so her mother was setting herself immediately to the proper task of ascertaining whether he was one who safely might be considered by a young girl. Margaret warmed with indignation when her mother's glance, after failing to find lack in Eric Hedon, seemed to direct Margaret to the faults in his well worn suit.

He, apparently, was completely unconscious of any particular scrutiny; he seemed simply to fear that, in his replies regarding himself, he might have exaggerated his account in the world.

"I don't mean that during all the last five years I've been regularly employed, Mrs. Sherwood. One doing my sort of work has to—and ought to want to—do a great deal of it on his own account. Even the Smithsonian Institution which sent me to Papua, and the American Museum of Natural History, which helped out expenses in Nepal, can't do all they would wish for every one. Usually some such institution or university or society is bequeathed a sum or appropriates a few thousand dollars for study of some primitive