“Thank you. For the next few weeks I am owned body and soul,” smiling, “by Jules Grémond who is stopping with me. Perhaps you know of him, Miss Dale? He’s made considerable of a stir since he came out of Africa. An old chum of mine whom I think you might enjoy meeting—perhaps after awhile you will allow me to arrange it.”
Hester always says she acted like a fool at this juncture and stammered out some unintelligible reply, and that he immediately departed, she thinks without any special consciousness of her idiocy—or at least she hopes so, for she frankly confesses she was in no state of mind to know. However that may be, the door had no sooner closed after him than the dignified junior Dale, caterer, became metamorphosed into an excited young girl who flew down the hall to the room where her sister had taken refuge.
“Come back to the sitting-room where we can talk without waking Daddy, quick!” she cried, pulling Julie down the hall. “Now what do you suppose?” when they had reached the little room.
“Some one has left an extra fine order,” seeing several pieces of paper clutched nervously in Hester’s hand.
“Don’t be so everlastingly material!” pinning the papers with a vicious stab to the back of the chair. “It has nothing to do with work, whatever—that is not exactly. Oh! do guess who has been here—and who is here?”
“Hester, are you hiding some one to surprise me?” looking eagerly about. “I know it is a man—I heard him. It can’t be Dr. Ware; it wasn’t his step. It’s—it’s—oh! Hester Dale, is it cousin Driscoe?”
“You’re getting hot,” cried Hester encouragingly, reveling in her sister’s excited curiosity.
“Tell me this minute,” demanded Julie, shaking her. “What other man would be coming here?”
“Well, there are others,” laughed Hester, teasingly. “Mr. Renshawe, for instance.”
“No!”