But Wendy Washburn did not answer my question. Instead he asked me one of his own.
"You don't worry much about things, do you?"
"What's the use?" I retorted.
"You rather surprise me, on that point," he ruefully admitted.
"Then it may surprise you to know that at this very moment I am worried, and terribly worried."
"About what?"
"About everything!"
He smiled a little.
"You don't look it."
"I was always told to keep up a good front," I explained, as that old streak of perversity, which kept tempting me to key my talk down to the underworld plane, reasserted itself. And I could see my Hero-Man's mouth harden.
"The sentiment may be admirable, but the phrase strikes me as rather obnoxious!"
I had always been too much of a pepper-pot, I suppose, to take criticism like that with folded hands and a meekly bowed head.
"It seemed good enough for the man who taught it to me," I said. And I had the satisfaction of beholding a hope fulfilled, for his face clouded up in spite of himself.
