Alrik and the Pretty Lady were already there before us, kneeling down with giggly, scorching faces before a huge corn-popper foaming white with little muffled, ecstatic notes of heat and harvest.
The Pretty Lady turned a crimson cheek to us, and Alrik's tanned skin glowed like a freshly shellacked Indian. Even the Old Mother's asthmatic breath purred from the jogging rocker like a specially contented pussy-cat.
Nothing in all the room, I remember, looked pallid or fretted except the great, ghastly white face of the clock. I despise a clock that looks worried. It wasn't late, anyway. It was scarcely quarter-past four.
Indeed, it was only half-past four when the company came. We were making such a racket among ourselves that our very first warning was the sudden, blunt, rubbery m-o-o of an automobile directly outside. Mud was the first thing I thought of.
Then the door flew open peremptorily, and there on the threshold stood the Blue Serge Man—not dank and wet with slime and seaweed, but fat and ruddy and warm in a huge gray 'possum coat. Only the fearful, stilted immovability of him gave the lie to his reality.
It was a miracle! I had always wondered a great deal about miracles. I had always longed, craved, prayed to experience a miracle. I had always supposed that a miracle was the supreme sensation of existence, the ultimate rapture of the soul. But it seems I was mistaken. A miracle doesn't do anything to your soul for days and days and days. Your heart, of course, may jump, and your blood foam, but first of all it simply makes you very, very sick in the pit of your stomach. It made a man like Alrik clutch at his belt and jump up and down and "holler" like a lunatic. It smote the Partridge Hunter somewhere between a cramp and a sob. It ripped the Old Mother close at her waist-line, and raveled her out on the floor like a fluff of gray yarn.
But the Pretty Lady just stood up with her hands full of pop-corn, and stared and stared and stared and stared. From her shining blond head to her jet-black slippers she was like an exploded pulse.
The Blue Serge Man stepped forward into the room and faltered. In that instant's faltering, Alrik jumped for him like a great, glad, loving dog, and ripped the coat right off his shoulders.
The Blue Serge Man's lips were all a-grin, but a scar across his forehead gave a certain tense, stricken dignity to his eyes. Very casually, very indolently, he began to tug at his gloves, staring all the while with malevolent joy on the fearful crayon portrait of the ancient grandame.
"That's the very last face I thought of when I was drowning," he drawled, "and there wasn't room enough in all heaven for the two of us. Bully old face, I'm glad I'm here. I've been in Cuba," he continued quite abruptly, "and I meant to play dead forever and ever. But there was an autumn leaf—a red autumn leaf in a lady's hat—and it made me homesick." His voice broke suddenly, and he turned to his wife with quick, desperate, pleading intensity. "I'm not—much—good," he gasped. "But I've—come back!"