Page:Keeban (IA keeban00balm).pdf/198

 "You're Janvier's daughter!" I blurted.

"Excellent!" she approved me and I felt like a boy in school.

She had been leaning slightly forward, not exactly tense, not at ease, either. Poised was the word for it; she'd been poised ever since I entered. Now she sat back more comfortably, being no longer in suspense about how much I knew.

"George was your friend Magellan?" I asked.

"That's what you named him."

"Felice also was present at the Feather?"

"She was the one who led you into the shed."

"I'm indebted," I acknowledged; and conversation languished.

For a second more I stared at her, as gay and piquant a little thing as ever a twenty-hour-train boasted; then, decidedly stumped as to my next step, I stared a while out the window.

Pleasant, Indiana winter scenery was skipping past us. There was clean, light snow on the fields through which stuck brown cornstalks, in those great, even patterns which so intriguingly alter as you dash past. There were frozen brooks with ice-encased willows bent over them; there were lots of agreeable looking