Meanwhile, Mr. Britt unostentatiously absented his body as well, taking the trolley for an inland village. At the time of Mendenhall's interview with the president he was speeding southward across country in a livery rig, catching the Lackawanna local for Binghamton about the time the wires were working and he was being searched for on all Lehigh Valley trains.
"Hello, Kirkland!" he said to the night clerk at the Arlington. "Back again, like a bad sixpence! Have my trunk sent up, will you? No—no supper!"
"Letter for you, Mr. Mitchell. Just came," said the clerk respectfully. "So we were expecting you. Haven't seen you for a long time."
Britt-Mitchell thrust the letter in his pocket unopened. "It'll keep till morning. I'm for bed. Good-night, Frank."
He turned in, weary with his exertions to be sure, but with the pleasing consciousness that
…some one done
Has earned a night's repose.
Elmsdale never learned these particulars, however. His genial and expansive smile and the unobtrusive manner of his fading away are there vaguely associated with Cheshire Puss, of joyful memory, whose disappearance, like his, began with the end of the tale.
Chapter III
"There's a franklin in the wilds of Kent, hath brought three hundred marks with him in gold … a kind of auditor."
It was quite late when Britt-Mitchell arose like a giant refreshed. First ringing for breakfast, he bathed and shaved and arrayed himself carefully in glad habiliments of quiet taste and cut, in which he bore slight resemblance to the rough-and-ready Britt of Elmsdale.