Aloud she said, in a tone of great displeasure:
“There is no time to argue with you now. It’s late. Please get dressed at once for supper.”
“We don’t want any supper,” said Andrée. “The nice little beast had all sorts of things in his knapsack. We’ve been eating all afternoon.”
“And we stopped at a funny little inn somewhere on the road and had ginger ale and more sandwiches. Mother, I wish you’d been there! It was the only decent time we’ve had in this place. We saw the most beautiful waterfall, and a wonderful gorge that an Indian’s supposed to have jumped across. And the man’s really very nice. Of course he’s common, and all that sort of thing, but he’s the most cheerful creature!”
“He said he was ‘athaletic,’” said Andrée, “and he is! He showed off all the time, and it was very amusing.”
But Claudine was not listening; she was thinking with dread of what she should say to Gilbert.
And in the end she was certainly not candid.
“The girls went for a long walk in the mountains,” she told him. She didn’t mention the “nice little beast,” and neither did they, whether from dissimulation or carelessness she didn’t care to investigate.
On an early train the next morning Gilbert and Mr. MacGregor went back to the city, and she drew a breath of relief. Now she had only two adversaries to struggle against—and perhaps the common little man as well.