this she laughed outright.

"I beg your pardon," she hastened to make amends, and then
spoiled it by adding, "but you are so funny."

Daylight began to feel a slight awkwardness, and the sun would
persist in setting her hair a-smouldering.

"I didn't mean to be funny," he said.

"That was why I laughed. But it is right, and perfectly good
grammar."

"All right," he sighed--"I shall meet you halfway in this
proposition--got that?" And the dictation went on. He discovered
that in the intervals, when she had nothing to do, she read books
and magazines, or worked on some sort of feminine fancy work.

Passing her desk, once, he picked up a volume of Kipling's poems
and glanced bepuzzled through the pages. "You like reading, Miss
Mason?" he said, laying the book down.

"Oh, yes," was her answer; "very much."

Another time it was a book of Wells', The Wheels of Change.
"What's it all about?" Daylight asked.

"Oh, it's just a novel, a love-story." She stopped, but he still
stood waiting, and she felt it incumbent to go on.