Nor was Mr. Faulkner to be outdone in the matter of correct deportment. He gravely took the pen offered to him, signed the register in the place indicated, and inquired if they might go at once to their rooms.
"Certainly," said Leicester, touching the bell on the desk. The ubiquitous Hickox appeared with the hand-bags, and Leicester handed him the keys.
This touch nearly finished Dorothy, for numbered keys seemed so very like a real hotel, that it struck her as quite the funniest thing yet.
As the Faulkners, following Mr. Hickox, went up the great staircase and disappeared around the corner, Leicester flew out from behind his desk, grasped Dorothy's hand, and fleetly, though silently, the two ran through the long parlor to one of the smaller rooms, shut the door, and then burst into peals of laughter.
For a moment they would pause, begin to speak to each other, and then go off again into choking spasms of hilarity.
Had they only known it, their two guests on the floor above, were doing almost the same thing. Mrs. Faulkner had thrown herself into an easy chair, and was laughing until the tears rolled down her cheeks. Mr. Faulkner, who was by nature a grave gentleman, was walking up and down the room, broadly smiling, and saying, "Well upon my word! well upon my word!"
Before Dorothy and Leicester had recovered their equilibrium, the two younger girls came rushing into the room where they were.
"Did they come? Are they here? What is the matter? Do tell us all about it!"
Dorothy, in her idea of the fitness of things had asked Lilian and Fairy to keep out of sight until after the arrival and registration had been safely accomplished; grandma, it had also been thought best, was not to appear until dinner-time. As Dorothy had expressed it, she knew the proper propriety for a proprietor, and she proposed to live up to it.
But of course when Fairy and Lilian, on the west veranda, heard the commotion in the small parlor, they could restrain their curiosity no longer, and insisted on being told all about it.