"You said the car was in front of your house. And it was the Haunted House," she cried gleefully.
"Did you really have to walk home?"
"Four miles and a half." Somehow it did not seem half so long and weary a way now as it had been seeming all the day. "And I was sure the car was stolen. And when we found it in the garage they thought I was ill and put me to bed, and Rosalie stayed home from school to nurse me."
"I am sorry. It was terribly stupid of me. I was sure the girls were in another scrape, and when the car stuck on them had got a ride back to school. It was a terrible blunder."
"I am glad of it now, because it brought you to visit me."
And he seemed in not the least bit of hurry, but settled back and talked, and he had a wonderful basket of fruit, apples and grapes and golden pears, and he hoped Doris would accept them in token of forgiveness.
"But when you tell your father, will he ask who brought them?"
"I shall just say the Curious Cat brought them to apologize—and father is not a bit inquisitive. He will think it is quite all right—he has the dearest way of thinking things are quite all right."
Doris did long to know how old he was—of course she could not ask—he surely was not nearly so old as father, yet he did not look young. The college men of Rosalie's favor looked like children beside him. And he talked like a man who knew things. But he could not be old—he laughed so readily, and teased so constantly, and his eyes were so friendly and warm. Father was forty-three, and forty-three is very terribly old when one is twenty.