CHAPTER XXIV
I SPEAK TO HER FATHER
"So glad to see you here, my boy," the judge was saying. And his little round face beamed at me across the library table. I had encountered him in the hall just as I had descended to rejoin the girls in the living-room. Forthwith, he elbowed me into the library.
"Know from Jack how glad you always are to escape girls," he remarked cheerily as he produced cigars. "Don't blame you at all—in fact, do you know it refreshes me to find—"
Don't know what dashed thing it refreshed him to find, for I never caught it. For just then through the doorway there floated, from across the hall, a bar of music—the laugh of the dearest girl in the world!
I strained for another bar.
"Hah!" ejaculated the judge, pausing with questioning uplift of cigar. "The silly cackle of those girls—it disturbs you. Yes, it does—I can see it—you look disturbed." And, dash it, he insisted upon closing the door. "You mustn't let them bother you while you are here," he urged pleasantly; "you must just go ahead and do the thing you want to do."
By Jove, there seemed little opportunity for it!
"Thanks awfully," I murmured feebly.
The judge proceeded genially: "Of course we all understand that you just came up to Wolhurst to please Jack." Then his face clouded. "H'm! Sorry to learn that he came home with another—" his eyes rolled through a circle—"er—is not feeling just fit. It's too bad, for I wanted some one to take you over the neighborhood—interesting landmarks, you know, reminiscent of Major André and Washington Irving."