For perhaps a week Betty reported little change in the daily routine of her work. She wrote letters, read from books, magazines, or newspapers, worked on the card-index record of correspondence, and sorted papers, pamphlets, and circulars that had apparently been accumulating for weeks. "But I'm getting along beautifully," she declared one day. "I've got Mrs. Gowing thawed so she actually says as many as three sentences to a course now. And you should see the beaming smile Benton gives me every morning!" "And--Mr. Denby?" questioned her mother, with poorly concealed eagerness. Betty lifted her brows and tossed her young head. "Well, he's improving," she flashed mischievously. "He asked for the salt _and_ the pepper, yesterday. And to-day he actually observed that he thought it looked like snow--at the table, I mean. Of course he speaks to me about my work through the day; but he doesn't say any more than is necessary. Truly, mother, dear, I'd never leave my happy home for _him_." "Oh, Betty, how can you say--such dreadful things!" Betty laughed again mischievously. "Don't worry, mumsey. He'll never ask me to do it! But, honestly, mother, I can't see any use in a man's being so stern and glum all the time." "Does he really act so unhappy, then?" At an unmistakable something in her mother's voice Betty looked up in surprise. "Why, mother, that sounded exactly as if you were _glad_ he was unhappy!" she exclaimed. Helen, secretly dismayed and terrified, boldly flaunted the flag of courage. "Did I? Oh, no," she laughed easily. "Still, I'm not so sure but I am a little glad: if he's unhappy, all the more chance for you to make yourself indispensable by helping him and making him happy. See?" "Happy!" scoffed Betty with superb disdain; "why, the man doesn't know what the word means." "But perhaps he has seen--a great deal of trouble, dear." The mother's eyes were gravely tender. "Perhaps he has. But is that any reason for inflicting it on other people by reflection?" demanded Betty, with all of youth's intolerance for age and its incomprehensible attitudes. "Does it do any possible good, either to himself or to anybody else, to retire behind a frown and a grunt, and look out upon all those beautiful things around him through eyes that are like a piece of cold steel? Of course it doesn't!" "Oh, Betty, how can you!" protested the dismayed mother again. But Betty, with a laugh and a spasmodic hug that ended in a playful little shake, retorted with all her old gay sauciness:-- "Don't you worry, mumsey. I'm a perfect angel to that man." Then, wickedly, she added as she whisked off: "You see, I haven't yet had a chance to poke even one finger inside of one of those cabinets!" It was three days later that Betty, having put on her hat and coat at Denby House, had occasion to go back into the library to speak to her employer.