MRS. RADER HAS A WORD TO SAY
finished. Their silence was austere. The girl reflected nothing of this, but kept her excited eyes veiled, and combated the tendency to an upward curl of the corners of her mouth. Except for such Puck-like manifestations she was demure, almost silent, and seemed interested in her dinner. Rader was the one of that curiously mooded quartet who seemed in a fund of talk.
"So you're back!" he said as if, to him, this was the greatest personal satisfaction; and reaching lean, long fingers to Carron, shook hands on the event. Mrs. Rader's eyes were caught by the sight of this, fascinated. Blanche looked down.
"I suppose these women have fussed over you to their heart's content," the scholar continued. "They are very free with the plaster if you've cut nothing but your finger."
"You didn't tell me you were hurt," Mrs. Rader faltered.
"I'm not—nothing but a bit of broken skin." He was immensely annoyed the matter should have come up at all. "I'd forgotten all about it."
"Don't you want some arnica?" His hostess seemed on the point, then and there, of doing her conscience-smitten best.
"A bottle of Burgundy will do more good," Rader determined. "I brought some up to celebrate." He
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