“I am, though.”
“What sort of scrape?”
“I don’t know how to tell you. I don’t know what you’ll think.”
Jan got him into the arm-chair, and took the other one himself. It was something to feel that Evan cared what he thought.
“Come! I don’t suppose it’s anything so very bad,” said he, encouragingly.
“Bad enough to prevent me from playing to-day, I’m afraid.”
“You surely don’t mean—that anybody’s dead?”
“I know I wish I was!”
“It isn’t that, then?”
“No; but I’ve got to meet somebody at two o’clock. I simply must,” declared Evan, with an air of dull determination.