"Because," said Ruth, with a deep satirical bow and a manner of punctilious ceremony, "you were so polite as to decline to escort her."
"My child!" remonstrated Mrs. Laniston, aghast. Then turning to the delinquent, "Why, Francis—how is this?"
"Frank gave us the slip—he promised to meet us," Ruth with true sisterly candour was bent on fixing his remissness upon him.
"I would have given up the project," Mr. Jardine felt it incumbent on him to say. "But we had waited a good while and the crowd was very impatient; and when the manager proposed to take the place it was on the score of balancing the swing, and really it seemed a little too pointed and conscious to decline—the wheel being a public conveyance, so to speak."
"And besides, he didn't give you time—he didn't anticipate a refusal," said Ruth. "He selected Lucia in preference to me, thank goodness! I wonder that, when he was attacked, Lucia did not fall out of the swing—it shook like a leaf in the wind."
"Francis should have been with you—I thought that was what you went out for—to escort your relatives," Mrs. Laniston fixed rebuking eyes on him.
"Oh, I did—I did," Frank's repentance was always most complete and disarming. He had no nettling reservation of justification. His square, rosy face was crestfallen and concerned. "I simply forgot! I stopped for some cigarettes at the cigar stand in the bar-room—or rather where the bar ought to be—and there were a lot of country fellows there, spinning yarns of bear-hunting and trapping wolves in the mountains—I stopped to listen—quaint characteristic stories—and I had no idea of how the time was passing. I am awfully sorry, Lucia. But my apologies do no good now."
"You needn't apologise," said Lucia good-naturedly, though she could not cease to sob as she spoke. "I was not in the least hurt—only considerably scared—and if you had joined us in time I should have missed the most sensational incident of my experience."
"It is not a little mortifying to me that I should have been the cause of it—and of your appearing in public on so conspicuous an occasion escorted so inappropriately, to say the least of it."
Frank was of the opinion that Jardine was in fault—he should have called the excursion off rather than consign Lucia to such escort. He should have brought the young ladies back to the hotel, if anything more were involved than their foolish, childish desire to swing in the big wheel. As Frank sat solemnly gazing at the toes of his white shoes, one hand on each knee, he was resolving that he would submit this view of the case to his mother as soon as he could have an audience with her free of Jardine's presence. It did not in the slightest degree, he felt, mitigate his own remissness in failing to appear, but surely Jardine need not have carried out the plan at all and any hazards. And having satisfied his conscience to this extent he began to seek to minimise the most nettling and derogatory phases of the incident, as it personally concerned his relatives.