Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/298

280 But Wendy Washburn did not answer my question. Instead he asked me one of his own.

"You don't worry much about things, do you?"

"What's the use?" I retorted.

"You rather surprise me, on that point," he ruefully admitted.

"Then it may surprise you to know that at this very moment I am worried, and terribly worried."

"About what?"

"About everything!"

He smiled a little.

"You don't look it."

"I was always told to keep up a good front," I explained, as that old streak of perversity, which kept tempting me to key my talk down to the underworld plane, reasserted itself. And I could see my Hero-Man's mouth harden.

"The sentiment may be admirable, but the phrase strikes me as rather obnoxious!"

I had always been too much of a pepper-pot, I suppose, to take criticism like that with folded hands and a meekly bowed head.

"It seemed good enough for the man who taught it to me," I said. And I had the satisfaction of beholding a hope fulfilled, for his face clouded up in spite of himself.