"Mother never spanks me," Linda replied with dignity.

"If you were my little girl," said Miss Skillern, with rolling lips,
"I'd put you over my knee with your skirts up and paddle you."

Never, Linda thought, had she heard anything worse; she was
profoundly shocked. The vision of Miss Skillern performing such an
operation as she had described cut its horror on her mind. There was
a sinking at her heart and a misty threat of tears.

To avert this she walked slowly away. It was hardly past nine o'clock;
her mother wouldn't be back for a long while, and she was too
restless and unhappy to sit quietly above. Instead, she continued
down to the floor where there were various games in the corridor
leading to the billiard-room. The hall was dull, no one was clicking
the balls about the green tables, and a solitary sick-looking man,
with inky shadows under fixed eyes, was smoking a cigarette in a
chair across from the cigar-stand.

He looked over a thick magazine in a chocolate cover, his gaze
arrested by her irresolute passage. "Hello, Bellina," he said.

She stopped. "Linda," she corrected him, "Linda Condon." Obeying a
sudden impulse, she dropped, with a sigh, into a place beside him.

"You're bored," he went on, the magazine put away. "So am I, but my
term is short."

She wondered, principally, what he was doing, among so many women,
at the Boscombe. He was different from Mr. Jasper, or the other men