Jack went back to Boston without seeing her again; for although he called, the sisters were both away.
CHAPTER XIII.
MAY DAY.
What Chicagoan will ever forget the winter of '92 and '93! It was as though the elements had joined with the majority who frowned down their city's audacious effort. The newspapers recorded the storms and their damage. What an unthinkable thing it was to undertake a World's Fair in such a climate! Certainly if one wanted an allegory of discomfort one had but to visit the Garden City at that season, and witness the teaming through torn-up streets, the building, and the elevating of railroad tracks, while the sense of shortness of time sent men to labor and often to die in exposed places when the mercury was lost below the zero mark. Roads were either iron-bound, or deep in the mud of a thaw, and blizzards descended furiously upon the glass portions of Exposition structures, destroying in an hour the work of weeks.
As the first of May approached, more stinging grew the criticisms upon the authorities who had failed to have the Columbian Exposition entirely ready to keep its engagement; but though on the great day Chicago was still in an undeniably uncomfortable condition of unfinished hotels and bad weather, the White City rose like a perfect superb lily from its defiling mud, and the great crowd that swarmed into Jackson Park on the morning of May 1st found so much to marvel at that they were good-natured and eager under a chill gray sky, and unmindful of the clinging soil into which they sank at every step.
Jack Van Tassel had arrived in town a couple of days before, and after registering at his hotel had called immediately at his old home.
The girls received him cordially, although he was unexpected. One or two letters had passed between Clover and himself during the winter, and she now asked him to leave his hotel and take possession of his old room. He declined with thanks, stating that his plans did not yet permit of a prolonged stay in the West, and that it would not be worth while to make the change.
"I am afraid he saw that I hesitated when I asked him," said Clover to her sister after the guest had departed. "I wish we had known that he was coming, then we could have thought the matter over and arrived at a decision. I really didn't know whether I was doing a proper thing or not."
Mildred, who had seen and been amused by her sister's perplexity all through the call, laughed mischievously.
"It is an odd thing if you can't invite your son to visit you," she said.