I sat up, eyeing her severely and picking grass and ants out of my hair.
“D’ you mean to tell me that you woke me out of that babe-like slumber to make me drink that goo? What is it, anyway? I’ll bet it’s another egg-nogg.”
“Egg-nogg it is; and swallow it right away, because there are guests to see you.”
I emerged from the first dip into the yellow mixture and fixed on her as stern and terrible a look at any one can whose mouth is encircled by a mustache of yellow foam.
“Guests!” I roared, “not for me! Don’t you dare to say that they came to see me!”
“Did too,” insists Norah, with firmness, “they came especially to see you. Asked for you, right from the jump.”
I finished the egg-nogg in four gulps, returned the empty tumbler with an air of decision, and sank upon the grass.
“Tell ’em I rave. Tell ’em that I’m unconscious, and that for weeks I have recognized no one, not even my dear sister. Say that in my present nerve-shattered condition I—”
“That wouldn’t satisfy them,” Norah calmly interrupts, “they know you’re crazy because they saw you out here from their second story back windows. That’s why they came. So you may as well get up and face them. I promised them I’d bring you in. You can’t go on forever refusing to see people, and you know the Whalens are—”
“Whalens!” I gasped. “How many of them? Not—not the entire fiendish three?”