The married pair at the table with the truest politeness ignored the presence of the just reunited lovers, and took up their occupations that had been interrupted by the visitors. Cleve opened his book and resumed his reading, but now in a lower tone, quite audible to Palma, but not disturbing to Ran or Judy. He was reading Marmion, the scene of the meeting between the pilgrim and the abbess on the balcony. But Palma, knitting mechanically, could not listen. She was seized with a terrible anxiety that filled her mind and crowded out everything else. She had, from the impulse of a warm heart, invited Judy to stay, and Judy was staying.
But where on the face of the earth was she to put Judy? They had in their doll’s house of a flat but four tiny rooms—parlor, kitchen and two bedrooms. What was to be done? How could she listen to the story the abbess was telling the pilgrim, and the minutes passing so rapidly, and bedtime coming on, and no bed to put her invited guest in? And there was Cleve utterly unconscious of her dilemma, although he knew as well as she did the extent—or rather limits—of their accommodation.
Cleve finished the canto and closed the book in complacent ignorance that Palma had not heard a word of it.
The clock on the mantel struck eleven. It was a cheap clock and it struck loudly.
Ran arose to bid good-night.
“I really ought to beg your pardon for keeping you up. But you will excuse me for this once,” he said.
“Why, certainly! Certainly! Don’t go yet. We shall not retire for hours. Oh, pray! pray! don’t go yet!” pleaded Palma with her curly hair fairly stiffening itself on end; for, when Ran had left, what, in the name of Heaven, was she to do with Judy? Take the girl in with herself and Cleve? Or lay her over Mrs. Pole on that narrow slab of a cot that could not hold two side by side?
Palma had got into a terrible dilemma which she feared, by the creepy coldness of her scalp, was going to turn her hair white!
She would have been very much relieved if—after the old-fashioned New England style—the betrothed lovers should sit up all night.
“Oh, do, do, do stay longer!” she still pleaded, looking beseechingly at Ran.