“Oh, I had a cousin who used to visit people out there. She said it was funny but dreadful. Isn’t it?”
“I wish you’d come and see,” he said earnestly. “I wish you and your brother’d come and let me show you.”
“Good heavens,” she cried;—“but you’re hospitable! Do you always ask everybody to visit you after they’ve said two words to you?”
“No, not everybody,” he returned, and on the impulse continued: “I’d ask you, though, after you’d said one word to me.” And because he meant it, he instantly became red.
“Good heavens!” she cried again, and stared at him thoughtfully, perceiving without difficulty his heightened colour. “Is that the way they talk in the West, Mr.—uh——”
“Oliphant,” he said.
“What?”
“My name’s Oliphant,” he informed her apologetically. “You called me Mister Uh.”
“I see,” she said, and as her attention was caught just then by something her sister was saying about Milly and Anna and Charlotte and Oliver, she turned from him to say something more, herself, about Milly and Anna and Charlotte and Oliver. Then, having turned away from him, she turned not back again, but seemed to have forgotten him.
The son of the house presently took him away, the mother and her older daughter murmuring carelessly as the two young men rose to go, while Lena said more distinctly, “Good afternoon, Mister Uh.” But the unfortunate Daniel carried with him a picture that remained tauntingly before his mind’s eye; and he decided to stay in New York a little longer, though he had written his father that he would leave for home the next day. He had been stricken at first sight.