“I am Talcott Hepburn, and I am afraid that I’ve been led into an unpardonably rude act.”
“Are you the son of Talcott Hepburn, the art collector?” said I.
“Yes,—oh, you know him then,” said he, relieved. “My friend Tom Warden took the liberty of bringing me along with him—only”—here he paused. “He has missed the train.”
I understood in a minute. Tom Warden is an artist, and he is the soul of hospitality. He knows Ethel and me as well as he knows his father and mother, and it never had occurred to his simple but executive soul that there was anything unusual in his asking a friend to come along without letting us know.
Of course, if we could accommodate eight we could accommodate nine. But now it looked as if we would have but five.
I presented Mr. Hepburn to the rest of the “family.” He was about twenty-four or five, good looking, smooth shaven, of course, with a sober expression that might have hidden a humorous temperament, but did not. It evidently did not strike him that there was anything whimsical in his having arrived ahead of the man who had invited him to be the guest of a stranger. He did see, however, that the act itself was one that might be misconstrued, and he began to explain the case to Ethel, who said at once,
“Why, Mr. Hepburn, Tom’s friends are our friends, and the more the merrier. I’m only sorry they missed the train.”
“He was busy with a picture that some one had bought and which he wasn’t satisfied with, and I dare say he missed it on that account. He was coming with a Mr. and Mrs. Benedict, and I was to meet him on the train. I was a little late myself, and just had time to step aboard, and they missed it.”
While he was talking I was looking at the telegraph office intending to step over there—it lay just across the track—to enquire whether there was a telegram for me. A messenger boy came out, mounted a wheel, and started across the track, bound for the road that leads up to Clover Lodge.
I ran and intercepted him.