Page:Earl Derr Biggers - Seven Keys to Baldpate (1913).djvu/118

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SEVEN KEYS TO BALDPATE

right as cook and leave. Just ignore us. We'll play at being our own bell-boys."

"Ignore you," cried Mr. Magee. "What Her- culean tasks you set. I'm not equal to that one." He picked up their traveling-bags and led the way up-stairs. "I m something of a bell-boy myself, when roused," he said.

The girl selected suite seventeen, at the farther end of the corridor from Magee's apartments. "It's the very one I used to have, years and years ago—at least two or three years ago," she said. "Isn t it stupid? All the furniture in a heap."

"And cold," said Mrs. Norton. "My land, I wish I was back by my own fire."

"I ll make you regret your words, Mrs. Nor ton," cried Magee. He threw up the windows, pulled off his coat, and set to work on the furni ture. The girl bustled about, lightening his work by her smile. Mrs. Norton managed to get con sistently in the way. When he had the furniture distributed, he procured logs and tried his hand at a fire. Then he stood, his black hair disheveled, his hands soiled, but his heart very gay, before the girl of the station.