Page:Dorothy Canfield--Hillsboro People.djvu/243

 chamois spectacle-wiper made for him by little Molly McCartey. He noticed the pattern of the silk in his visitor's necktie and it made him think of one of Rosalie Loyette's designs. He smiled a little.

The president regarded this smiling silence with suspicion. He cocked his eye penetratingly upon his librarian. "But it is very queer, J. M., that as long as I have known you, I never heard that you had any family at all."

J. M. put his clean and polished spectacles back on his nose and looked through them into the next room, where Ivan Petrofsky sat devouring his first lesson in political economy. Then he turned, beaming like an amiable sphinx upon his interrogator. "Do you know—I never realized it myself until just lately," he said.