"Now that looks like business, anyhow. Who is the man?" demanded
Rick Portus, who was younger than the others, and meant "to make
things hum" when he got a chance.

'Duke Radford fumbled with the head of a flour barrel, and for a
moment did not answer. It was an agonizing moment for Katherine,
who was entering items in the ledger, and had to be blind and deaf
to what was passing round her, yet all the time was acutely
conscious that something was wrong somewhere.

The head of the barrel came off with a jerk, and then 'Duke
answered with an air of studied indifference: "An Englishman, Astor
M'Kree said he was; Selincourt or some such name, I think."

A burst of eager talk followed this announcement, but, her entries
made in the ledger, Katherine slipped away from it all and hurried
into the sitting-room, where supper was already beginning. But the
food had lost its flavour for her, and she might have been feeding
on the sawdust and pine cones of which Mrs. M'Kree had spoken for
all the taste her supper possessed. She had to talk, however, and
to seem cheerful, yet all the time she was shrinking and shivering
because of this mysterious mood displayed by her father at the
mention of a strange man's name.

'Duke Radford did not come in from the store until it was nearly
time for night school, so Katherine saw very little more of him,
except at a distance, for that evening; but he was so quiet and
absorbed that Mrs. Burton asked more than once if he were feeling
unwell. She even insisted on his taking a basin of onion gruel
before he went to bed, because she thought he had caught a chill.