could believe it) on the floor; sitting and moving her hands along the
shelves as familiarly as you please. Good Heavens! if she wasn't busy
dusting his books!

Flossie didn't see him, for she had her back to the door; and he stood
there on the threshold for a second, just looking at her. She wore a
loose dark-blue overall evidently intended to wrap her up and conceal
her. But so far from concealing her, the overall, tucked in and
smoothed out, and altogether adorably moulded by her crouching
attitude, betrayed the full but tender outline of her body. Her face,
all but the white curve of her cheek and forehead, was hidden from
him, but he could see the ivory bistre at the nape of her bowed neck,
with the delicate black tendrils of her curls clustering above it. Her
throat, as she stooped over her task, was puckered and gathered, like
some incredibly soft stuff, in little folds under her chin. He drew in
his breath with a sighing sound which to Flossie was the first
intimation of his presence.

To say that Flossie rose to her feet would be a misleading description
of her method. She held on to the edge of a bookshelf by the tips of
her fingers and drew herself up from the floor, slowly, as it were by
some mysterious unfolding process, not ungraceful. She turned on him
the wide half-mischievous, half-frightened eyes of a child caught this
time in some superb enormity.

"Flossie," he said with an affectation of severity, "what _have_ you
been doing?"

She produced her duster gingerly. "You can see," said she, "only I
didn't mean you to catch me at it." She knelt down by the fireplace
and gave her duster a little flick up the chimney. "I never, never in
all my life saw such a lot of dust. I can't think how you've gone on
living with it."

He smiled. "No more can I, Flossie. I don't know how I did it."

"Well, you haven't got to do it, now. It's all perfectly sweet and
clean."

"It's all perfectly sweet, I know that, dear." She turned towards the
door but not without a dissatisfied look back at the bookcase she had
left. "Aren't you going to let me thank you?"

"You needn't. I was only helping Mrs. Downey."

"Oh--"

"She's been having a grand turn-out while you were away."

"The deuce she has--"

"Oh you needn't be frightened. Nobody's touched your precious books
but me. I wouldn't let them."

"Why wouldn't you let them?"

"Be-cause--Oh, I say, it's six o'clock; are you going to stay?"

"Perhaps. Why?"