Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/226

 "But can you, Sadie?"

"Not if there's a roast comin' ev'ry time I make a try at it!" was the girl's somewhat embittered retort.

Kestner, conscious of her anger, glanced down at his watch.

"But why isn't Wilsnach here?" he asked.

Sadie, getting up from her chair, crossed aimlessly to the window and stared out over the serrated line of the housetops.

"I ain't his nurse!" was her retort, flung back over an insolent shoulder.

"But I sent for you both," explained Kestner, at a loss to account for both her sudden acerbity and her splendor of raiment. For Sadie was arrayed in a tailored suit of steel blue that fitted her like a glove, with a modish little rainbow hat a-rake on her elaborately coiffured head and a huge bunch of hothouse violets pinned to her waist.

"Service work ain't exactly made us into Siamese twins," she announced, as she continued to stare out over the housetops. Her soul was not at peace with itself, and she preferred to evade the over-investigatory eye of her chief. The belated Wilsnach, she even suspected, was at that moment patiently