Billy and Arkwright had turned at her first words. At her last, Arkwright, with a half-despairing, half-reproachful glance at Billy, stepped forward.
“Miss Greggory!—you are Miss Alice Greggory, I am sure,” he said pleasantly.
At the first opportunity Billy murmured a hasty excuse and left the room. To Aunt Hannah she flew with a woebegone face.
“Oh, Aunt Hannah, Aunt Hannah,” she wailed, half laughing, half crying; “that wretched little fib-teller of a clock of yours spoiled it all!”
“Spoiled it! Spoiled what, child?”
“My first meeting between Mary Jane and Miss Greggory. I had it all arranged that they were to have it alone; but that miserable little fibber up-stairs struck eleven at half-past ten, and Miss Greggory heard it and thought she was fifteen minutes late. So down she hurried, half awake, and spoiled all my plans. Now she's sitting in there with him, in chairs the length of the room apart, discussing the snowstorm last night or the moonrise this morning—or some other such silly thing. And I had it so beautifully planned!”
“Well, well, dear, I'm sorry, I'm sure,” smiled Aunt Hannah; “but I can't think any real harm is done. Did Mary Jane have anything to tell her—about her father, I mean?”
Only the faintest flicker of Billy's eyelid testified that the everyday accustomedness of that “Mary Jane” on Aunt Hannah's lips had not escaped her.
“No, nothing definite. Yet there was a little. Friends are still trying to clear his name, and I believe are meeting with increasing success. I don't know, of course, whether he'll say anything about it to-day—now. To think I had to be right round under foot like that when they met!” went on Billy, indignantly. “I shouldn't have been, in a minute more, though. I was just trying to think up an excuse to come up and send down Miss Greggory, when Mary Jane began to tell me something—I haven't the faintest idea what—then she appeared, and it was all over. And there's the doorbell, and the tenor, I suppose; so of course it's all over now,” she sighed, rising to go down-stairs.
As it chanced, however, it was not the tenor, but a message from him—a message that brought dire consternation to the Chairman of the Committee of Arrangements. The tenor had thrown up his part. He could not take it; it was too difficult. He felt that this should be told—at once rather than to worry along for another week or two, and then give up. So he had told it.