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It was her office, anyway, as much as his; and besides, she had left her ear-'phone. Not that she needed it, of course, but she must keep up appearances, although it seemed impossible to persuade people that she was no longer deaf. Even Rimrock had shouted in that old, maddening way the instant she did not reply. It was natural, of course, but with him at least she would like it the other way.
"Oh, that reminds me!" she cried laughing gayly and picked up her ear-'phone. "What was that you said?" she asked with mock anxiety, slipping the headband over her head, and Rimrock looked at her in surprise. "By grab!" he exclaimed, "I believe you can hear! What do you carry that thing around for?" She twitched it off and gazed at him again with a triumphant but baffling smile.
And then in a flash of sudden resentment she bit her lips and let him shout. If he still wished to think that she was deaf as a post she would not correct him again. Perhaps if her suspicions should prove to be justified it would help her to discover his plans. In her room that evening Mary brought from her trunk the ear-'phone she had cast aside.
A hundred times she had informed him politely that she was not deaf when she wore her ear-'phone, and a hundred times he had listened impatiently and gone on in his sharp, rasping snarl. She drew away shuddering as he looked over some papers and cleared his throat for a fresh start; and then, without reason that he could ever divine, she burst into tears and fled.
Nor was she lacking in those qualities of beauty which we have come to associate with her craft. She had quiet brown eyes that lit up when she smiled, a high nose and masses of hair. But across that brown hair that a duchess might have envied lay the metal clip of her ear-'phone, and in her dark eyes, bright and steady as they were, was that anxious look of the deaf.
They watched, and they listened, which was not the least of the reasons why Mary Fortune laid her ear-'phone aside. No person can enjoy the intimacies of life when they are shouted, ill-advisedly, to the world. But if when she first came to town, worn and tired from her journey, she had seemed more deaf than she was, Mary Fortune had learned, as her hearing improved, to artfully conceal the fact.
Mary reached for her ear-'phone and slipped it on and listened to catch every word. If Jepson saw fit to practice deceit she had no compunction in listening in. "Well, that's all right," he was saying, "she can't hear what we say. You go on out for your lunch." There was a scuffling of feet and then, still talking, Jepson led the way to the Directors' room.
The marble steps, which Rimrock had insisted upon having, led up and then turned to both sides and as she came down, smiling, with her ear-'phone left off and her hair in a glorious coil, Rimrock paused and his eyes grew big. "By Joe, like that Queen picture!" he burst out impulsively and went bounding to meet her half way.
I just want you to know that I've earned this stock and that nobody here has been trimmed." "That's right," he agreed and his eyes opened wider as he took her all in, once more. "Say, was that the reason you were saving your money?" he asked as he glanced at the ear-'phone. "Because if I'd a-known it," he burst out repentantly, "I'd never touched it no, honest, I never would."
Just make yourself at home and anything I can do for you, please feel free to let me know." She thanked him politely and then, as she ran through the files, she absently removed her ear-'phone. "Just hold out that report of the mining experts," she heard Jepson remark to his clerk; and in an instant her suspicions were confirmed.
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