Page:Delight - de la Roche - 1926.djvu/21

 I'd not have coom here if I'd thought you'd make game of me."

Mrs. Jessop jingled the keys in her apron pocket and laughed loudly but good-humouredly. "Very well," she said. "I'll show you your room now, and you can whisper your name to me after the lights are out." She flung open a door across the passage and turned the light in a small room, scantily furnished, but clean.

"I'll give a hand with your boxes," she said cheerfully. May Phillips and she began at once to drag the two tin boxes across the linoleum-covered floor into the bedroom. Kirke and the stately girl were left alone in the passage, beneath the oil lamp. She was almost as tall as he. With a sigh she pulled off her drooping hat, disarranging the hair about her ears. It was a shining, pale gold, springing from the roots with strong vitality, waving closely over her head, and clinging in little curls about her temples and nape. But her skin was not blond. Rather the exquisite, golden brown of some rare brunettes, with a warm glow on the cheeks, as when firelight touches the surface of a lovely brazen urn. Her eyes were an intense, dark brown, sleepy now, under thick lashes that seemed to cling together wilfully as though to veil the emotion reflected in their depths. Here was mystery, thought Kirke. And her mouth, he thought, was the very throne of sweetness, as it curved with parted lips, pink as a pigeon's feet. His shrewd eyes observed the lovely line that swept from her round chin to her breast, her perfect shoulders, her strong neck, her hands coarsened by work. He moved closer to her.

"Come, my dear," he said, "tell me your name."

She shook her head. "You'd laugh."

"I'm as likely to greet as to laugh. Out with it," he persisted.