Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/198

186 down opposite me and the little Jap pussyfooted into the room.

"I never drink," I told him. I don't know whether it was the promptness or the primness with which I piped out that virtuous declaration that brought one of the heat-lightning smiles to his lips.

"Of course," he agreed. But I turned pink again, for I still felt that he was in some way making fun of me.

He sat studying me, in an abstracted sort of way as I began to eat. He could see, I suppose, that I was hungry, and long before the days when I used to consume untold quantities of marshmallows and olives smuggled into the Ursuline academy I had won a justly established reputation as an upstanding and honest eater. The repast confronting me may not have had all the romance of a midnight feast behind a practise-piano in a lightless recreation-room, but it made up in material what it lacked in spirit. For there was boned capon, and a mousse of ham, and Parker House rolls, and some queer tasting little sandwiches which my Hero-Man told me were made of caviar. But the latter I promptly passed by for a little silver boat of French bon-bons.

Then Wendy Washburn began to fish, for it was plain that I was still perplexing him.