The Magpies Nest Read Free Page B

down the hall.
    Evan shut the door and looked at her, his eyes tv. inkling despite himself.
    "Close call, young lady," he said. "And, anyway, time little girls were in bed. You know you mustn't stay after ten."
    "Who was that?" she demanded, ignoring his re minder of his own rule—a quite extraordinary rule, but one which it had suited him to make.
    "Conroy Edgerton, the big land man," said Evan "Curious one, why do you want to know?"
    "I knew it," she nodded solemnly, not heeding him "What's he doing here?"
    "Rigging up some deal. He's starting a big company North, you know; got concessions from the Sleepy R. I met him in Winnipeg last year. Anything else?"
    "Good night," she said, and began edging past him.
    "Having pumped me dry, the young lady has no further use for me," he complained. "Come here, you Mighty Atom!" He had her fast. "Now, you give me one. You've never kissed me yet."
    Millions of girls—millions of kisses! But she had done with the subject for the moment, her mind being on the weighty matter of a box of chocolates. So she said "Yes," stood on tiptoe to frame his obediently bent head with her palms, and kissed him on the mouth.
    "You are a baby," he said. "With your mouth shut —like that! Never mind, you're a dear. Good night, child."
    She slid out, squeezing through the partly opened door like a mouse through a crack, and vanished down the hall, a moving blue shadow, past the housekeeper's room, safe in her own tiny cubicle, after a momentary pause at Agnes's door. The transom was dark; Agnes was either asleep or philandering. Hope did not care for the other one, Belle, who was fat and loud-voiced. She went to bed, suppressing her desire for a feminine conference. And, since she must rise at six, she slept the sleep of the unjust within five minutes after her head touched the pillow.
     
     

CHAPTER III
    BELLE, the fat waitress, lay abed with acute tri-digestion, groaning, and below Hope took her place. She stood behind the screen which sheltered the kitchen door, yawning delicately, for it was not yet seven o'clock, and watching for the early comers to the dining-room. They, too, yawned and rubbed their eyes, and looked disconsolate and lonely in the big room, seated before desert-like expanses of more or less white linen. Agnes swayed to and fro along the cocoa-matting lane between the two rows of tables, moving with the grace of a Greek girl bearing an amphora upon her shoulder instead of a lacquered tin tray. Agnes was slender and black-eyed, with cheek bones of a betraying prominence; she had a certain graciousness of manner that disarmed even the hardiest commercial traveler; and the early ones sought her tables. Hope drew her behind the screen a moment.
    "If a big man, in a grey suit and a white waistcoat, comes in, will you please let me take his order?" she asked confidentially.
    Agnes was in haste, and nodded a "yes," not stopping to reason why.
    Immediately the big man came in, pink faced and fresh and yawnless, and sat at one of Hope's own tables, in a retired corner near one of the long windows. His waistcoast shamed the linen desert, and the early sunlight glittered on a diamond in his tie.
    "Beefsteak—pork chops—hamaneggs—teaorcoffee?" Hope murmured timidly over his shoulder.
    There were other words on her tongue, but she waited to see if any gleam of recognition lighted his eye. It did not. She retreated, and returned with such viands as he designated. The other early ones were leaving; there was always a lull between the very early and the chronically late. Hope sat in the window and watched him attack his beefsteak, drawing the white muslin curtains about her, and looking out from between them like a little nun from her white coif. He was quite aware of it, and waited until the door had closed on the last of the other breakfasters. Then, seeing him about to speak, she forestalled him.
    "Thank you for the chocolates," she murmured gently.
    "The what?" he remarked, slightly