“I want us all to go—all of us,—over to Mr. Gately’s office——”
“Come ahead!” cried Rivers; “I promised old Brice, here, that I’d go this very day, and I broke my appointment. Sorry, old man, but I had to see Friend Doctor, on the jump. Let’s go now, in accordance with the Witch’s whim, and we’ll take the big wagon, and all go.”
He often called Zizi the Witch, or the Elf-child, and she liked it from him, though she usually resented any familiarity.
She smiled at him, but I noted an undercurrent of sadness in her gaze, and I knew she was thinking of the evidence of the snow crystal.
For though Zizi liked Rivers a lot, and though she really had faith in his innocence of wrongdoing, yet her whole fealty was to Pennington Wise, and her hunch about the snowflake drawing might lead to disastrous results in more ways than one.
Olive shrank from going to her guardian’s office,—she had never been there since the tragedy,—but a few whispered words from Zizi persuaded her to agree to accompany us.
And to help matters, I told her that if she preferred not to go into Mr. Gately’s rooms, she could remain in my office with Norah, while we went.
Mrs. Vail insisted on being of the party, and ran briskly off to get her bonnet.
The atmosphere seemed peculiarly charged with a feeling of impending disaster, and yet, not one of us would have held back. Pennington Wise was very grave and quiet; Zizi, on the other hand, was as one electrified. She sprang about with quick, darting motions, she giggled almost hysterically and then suddenly became most gentle and tender. She ran for Olive’s wraps herself, and bringing them, put them on with the careful air of a mother dressing her child.
Olive, herself, was as one dazed. She, now and then, looked toward Rivers with a shy, yet wistful glance, and he looked back with a big, hearty smile that seemed to warm her very soul.