“I am convinced,” he said, “that our friend Quest’s advice is good. We will at any rate embark upon this particular frivolity which he suggests.”
2.
Quest took the dispatch which the hotel clerk handed to him one afternoon a fortnight later, and read it through without change of expression. Lenora, however, who was by his side, knew at once that it contained something startling.
“What is it?” she asked.
He passed his arm through hers and led her down the hall to where the Professor and Laura were just waiting for the lift. He beckoned them to follow him to a corner of the lounge.
“There’s one thing I quite forgot, a fortnight ago,” he said, slowly, “when I suggested that we should none of us look at a newspaper all the time we were in California. Have you kept to our bargain, Professor?”
“Absolutely!”
“And you, girls?”
“I’ve never even seen one,” Lenora declared.
“Nor I,” Laura echoed.