Kate was amazed at the way petulance had turned to sorrow.
“I don’t know who, or even exactly how,” she confessed. “I was alone for a second on the terrace. A man appeared just out of the wind in a blowing, long cape. He had a singing voice at first so I hardly knew whether he was real. And he quoted ‘The King of the Fairies.’”
Elsie nodded. Nothing in Kate’s account surprised her apparently. The girls did not speak to each other again but silently worked together repairing the damage done to Elsie’s hair-dressing, getting her into the fairy green dress, and finally bathing away evidences of tears. Supper was just about over downstairs before they were ready to descend, and dance strains sounding. Jack had not given Kate up, however, but was faithfully waiting for her on the stairs.
He saw the girls the minute they appeared at the upper turning, and bounded up several steps to meet them. “Where have you been hiding?” he asked, laughingly, and without any signs of surprise whatever. “I’ve managed to save some salad for you both and ices, too, here in the window seat.”
It was a window seat on the stairs, halfway down the first flight. “Oh, thanks,” Kate said, heartily. “Have you had some yourself, though?”
“Hardly likely, not until you came. Didn’t you promise to have supper with me?” Jack looked feigned surprise and grief.
He was certainly making their return to society easier. Girls and boys glanced up at them rather curiously as they danced past the drawing-room door, and a few of the mothers, sitting where they had a view of the stairs and the landing, rather stared. But since the truants could laugh and talk with Jack, who was acting as though their absence had been in no way extraordinary, they had no time to be self-conscious.
But suddenly Jack’s face went queer right in the middle of some nonsense. It was half a laugh, half dismay that twisted his countenance. Quick as thought, he pointed up to the second turn of the stairs. “That’s a fine old clock!” he exclaimed. “Take me up and show it to me.”
Why they obeyed his command so docilely—put their plates down again on the window seat and went back up the stairs—they hardly knew. But they did go, like lambs. And when they had turned a corner and were out of sight of dancers and chaperons Jack stopped, not looking at the clock at all, and dropped his eyes to Elsie’s feet. Even Elsie laughed when she saw what he was calling attention to. In their hurry the girls had forgotten one item, and here was Elsie ready to appear in the drawing-room in her pink satin, swansdown-edged boudoir slippers. They were very dainty slippers, quite fetching in fact, but they were hardly in harmony with the fairy green frock.
“Run back and change while Kate and I admire the clock,” Jack advised. And Elsie ran.