Child Friday Read Online Free Page B

with Bella it will be no use your remaining here, I’m afraid.”
    Emily went up to the bitch and put a hand lightly on her head.
    “Good girl, good Bella,” she said softly. “I won’t hurt your master—so please be friends.”
    The bitch sniffed her hand suspiciously, then laid her long muzzle down between her paws and sighed deeply.
    “She’s accepted you; your approach was the right one and she likes your voice,” said Dane Merritt, and rose then to shake hands.
    He was a tall man with an abrupt, rather clipped way of speaking; his grasp was firm and impersonal and he did not appear to fumble for her hand, although when she tried to withdraw it his fingers tightened on hers.
    “No, leave it there for a moment,” he said a little impatiently. “I can tell a great deal from hands.”
    He traced the shape of her fingers lightly and swiftly with his own, turning her hand over to touch the lines of her palm.
    “Are you wearing a hat?” he asked when he had released her, and when she answered that she was, told her to remove it .
    “Do you mind?” he said, his hands running over the bones of her face and the shape of her skull.
    “No,” she said nervously! “But I feel rather like a horse being vetted.”
    He laughed and dropped his hands at once.
    “How young you sound,” he said, again with that hint of impatience. “I told Louisa Pink than young things with the bloom still on them wouldn’t suit, but she seemed to think — How old are you, really?”
    ‘Twenty.”
    “H’m ... she told me twenty-four.”
    “I don’t see that my age need worry you, Mr. Merritt,'” said Emily gravely. “I’ve been earning my living since I was seventeen and bloom gets rubbed off very soon, you know, when you have to fend for yourself.”
    “That has a bitter sound,” he observed. “Hasn’t life been kind to you?”
    “It wasn’t meant to be bitter,” said Emily with honest surprise. “I was only trying to convey that some people have to learn to accept life as it is earlier than others. I was one of them, so the fact that I am only twenty shouldn’t matter to you.”
    “Dear me!” he remarked a little dryly. “Louisa has certainly picked me a change this time. Sit down over there and we’ll get down to business.”
    She sat in the chair he indicated on the other side of the fireplace, wondering if he was already being put off by the unguarded speech which before now had found disfavour with other employers, and even with Miss Pink, whose name she had never before known to be Louisa.
    Dane did not continue speaking at once but sat in his chair looking at her. In the dim light it was difficult to believe that he could not see her. His eyes were apparently clear and unscarred and his regard steady. She studied his face curiously and with a faint sense of trespass, seeing that the skin was stretched a little too tautly over the prominent bones, and that the mouth had the same look of tautness, as though acceptance had been hard to learn and was still, perhaps, not always quite under control. The dominant, high-bridged nose, gave his face a faint suggestion of arrogance.
    ‘Well?” he asked suddenly, and Emily jumped.
    “I always know when people are watching me,” he informed her with cynical tolerance. “You may find it uncomfortable living with a blind man, Emily Moon, for all your boasted experience of life as it is.”
    “I’m sorry,” she said and hastily averted her gaze. “I didn’t mean to intrude.”
    “Or to pity, I trust,” he retorted dryly, and her eyes went again to his as though he must see the swift denial in her face.
    “Pity is never welcome,” she said, remembering her own youthful smarting under the unthinking tolerance of others. “And in your case quite unnecessary, I should think, Mr. Merritt . ”
    He changed his position, crossing one long leg over the other.
    “You sound a remarkable young person,” he observed with an undertone of mockery. “I almost think you