Page:Mary Rinehart - More Tish .djvu/224

 216  But I noticed she grew rather quiet after a while.

At last she said: "You—I don't suppose you've seen that Mr. Burton anywhere, have you?"

"We saw something of him in Paris," I replied, and glanced out the window. He was standing across what had once been the street, and if ever I've seen hungry eyes in a human being he had them.

"He was so awfully touchy, Miss Lizzie," she said. "And then I was never sure Why do you suppose he isn't fighting? Not that it's any affair of mine, but I used to wonder."

"He's got a milk leg," I said, and set the coffee kettle off.

"A milk leg! A milk Oh, how ridiculous! How Why, Miss Lizzie, how can he?"

"Don't ask me. They get 'em sometimes too. They're very painful. My cousin, Nancy Lee McMasters, had one after her third child and"

I am sorry to say that here she began to laugh. She laughed all over the hut, really, and when she had stood up and held to the plank and laughed she sat down on a box of condensed milk and laughed again. I am a truthful woman, and I had thought it was time she knew the facts, but I saw at once that I had make a mistake. And