"I
hope I'm not--disturbing you?"
"Oh no. No," and he suddenly felt a most complete if unwilling admiration
for the utter finish with which she was playing her side of the act.
"Only you see," and this was Oliver doing his best at the ingenuous boy,
"Ted Billett, you know--he said he might be having dinner with you
this evening--and I've got a very important letter for him--awful
nuisance--don't see why it couldn't have gone in the mail by itself--but
the man was absolutely insistent on my delivering it by hand." "A letter?
Oh yes. And they want an answer right away?" Again Oliver realized
grudgingly that whatever Mrs. Severance might be she was certainly not
obvious. For "I'm so glad you came then," she was saying with what seemed
to be perfect sincerity. "Won't you come in?"
That little pucker that came and went in the white brow meant that she
was sure that she could manage him, sure she could carry it off, Oliver
imagined--and he was frank enough with himself to admit that he was not at
all sure that she couldn't.
"Oh Ted--" he heard her say, very coolly but also with considerable
distinctness, as if her voice had to carry, "there's a friend of yours here
with a letter for you--"
And then she had brought him inside and was apologizing for having the
front room so badly lighted but one had to economize on light-bills, didn't
one, even for a small apartment, and besides didn't it give one a little
more the real feeling of evening? And Oliver was considering why, when if
as he pressed the bell, he had felt so much like a modern St.
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