"Why there's—it is Van Tassel!" ejaculated the latter. "Oh, Van."
How Jack anathematized the cheerful, loud voice. He turned a deaf ear and hastened on.
"Van Tassel!" bawled the other. "Here, what's the matter with you? They're here, old fellow."
There is no creature so difficult to escape as the man who is convinced he is doing you a favor.
Jack could hear the legs of his persecutor's chair grate on the flooring as he sprang to his feet. He paused and turned around, knowing that if he persisted, his misguided friend would not hesitate to pursue and capture him in his zeal.
"They're right here," repeated Ogden explanatorily, his ingenuous florid face beaming. "Wasn't it curious you should have passed by, so near and yet so far?"
Van Tassel and Page advanced, the former with a rigidly impassive countenance. It seemed long to him that he was crossing the ten feet of balcony which lay between him and the young women whose reception he feared sensitively.
Ogden, and doubtless their other friends, supposed them united by ties of intimacy. Much as he disliked to obtrude himself upon them, to permit strangers to suppose that he was not pleased to meet these ladies would set many tongues wagging and was not to be considered. Better to risk a snub than to appear disloyal to those his father had honored.
But he need not have feared. Clover and Mildred were not the inexperienced girls of his acquaintance. They had taken in the situation as keenly as he had done, and when he reached them were ready to greet him and Mr. Page in a matter-of-course manner, calculated to divert suspicion had any existed. The circumstances, moreover, were favorable. The common interest of the parade at once claimed the attention of all, and after Page had been introduced to the strangers of the party, Jack drew a breath of relief that at any rate the ice was broken.
He stood near Mildred, looking down upon the gay plumes, uniforms, and prancing steeds of the procession, and wished she would address him. Was this the girl who had always been eagerly ready to act as crew of his boat, whose strong arms had not been of contemptible assistance in bailing her out? who had received his invitations to sail in a thankful spirit, being thereby richly repaid for her physical exertions? She had sometimes needed to be snubbed out of too energetic participation in his own and Clover's plans. She had been a good fellow always, Jack remembered, even if occasionally inconveniently effervescent in the matter of animal spirits; had been an honest, fair antagonist, with a brave love of sport.