Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/298

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280
THE HOUSE OF INTRIGUE

But Wendy Washburn did not answer my question. Instead he asked me one of his own.

"You don't worry much about things, do you?"

"What's the use?" I retorted.

"You rather surprise me, on that point," he ruefully admitted.

"Then it may surprise you to know that at this very moment I am worried, and terribly worried."

"About what?"

"About everything!"

He smiled a little.

"You don't look it."

"I was always told to keep up a good front," I explained, as that old streak of perversity, which kept tempting me to key my talk down to the underworld plane, reasserted itself. And I could see my Hero-Man's mouth harden.

"The sentiment may be admirable, but the phrase strikes me as rather obnoxious!"

I had always been too much of a pepper-pot, I suppose, to take criticism like that with folded hands and a meekly bowed head.

"It seemed good enough for the man who taught it to me," I said. And I had the satisfaction of beholding a hope fulfilled, for his face clouded up in spite of himself.