Page:The Star in the Window.pdf/206

196 blushed when Dr. Booth leaned over her, and again asked her to place her arm over his shoulder. There was no more cause to blush this third time than before; nor so much, for she was prepared now. But Reba's blushes were often unaccountable. It was no slight blush. Her face grew scarlet. The bright glow spread to her very ear-tips.

Dr. Booth observed it, of course. He would have been blind indeed if he hadn't. But naturally it was necessary to complete the demonstration once begun—lift her up, and put her down again gently.

Afterward he mercifully turned immediately away from her with a brief, "Thank you very much, Miss Jerome. That's all." And Reba got out of the room somehow.

During the following fortnight she suffered horribly from chagrin when she recalled that blush. But Dr. Booth's unchanged and impersonal attitude toward her, after the episode, was proof to her that her blush was of small significance to him, and the experience was just beginning to lose its grasp upon her when something else happened to make its details flash up bright and vital again.

One night, unaware that he would be inconveniencing any one, Dr. Booth remained in his lecture-room after he had dismissed his class at the usual hour of nine-thirty, in order to correct some papers (he had given his pupils a short quiz), and after he had finished with the papers, he glanced through a typewritten manuscript of his own—a report on a recent investigation—that should be mailed that night.

When he emerged into the large outer room, into which the smaller classrooms all opened, he observed