"No, sir; I don't recall ever seeing you before, sir."
Of course, I knew he had not, but the cub got up with a sour laugh. Then with a murmured gruff apology, he withdrew, saying he had a headache and was going to bed. And, by Jove, what a look he gave me from the door!
"Midnight!" ejaculated some one at length, just as the professor finished a jolly rum but interesting yarn of adventures in Tibet. We all rose and I was answering a challenge of Billings' for a Sunday morning game of billiards, when all of a sudden a scream rang out from somewhere above. Then came a greater commotion—two voices raised in rapid and excited colloquy. On top of this another scream, louder and more piercing—a woman's call for help.
"One of the maids," Billings hazarded. "A mouse—"
"That was Frances!" I answered him excitedly, and we all piled out into the hall and peered down its long vista.
Down one of the dimly illumined angles of the great stairway a white figure darted, then paused, abashed, crouching back against the wall at sight of us advancing. Above her sounded a man's voice, and even as she screamed again, he overtook her, clasping her arm.
"Frances—dear, dear Frances!" he cried. "Are you afraid of me?"
And he threw his arms around her. "Come on back, dearest!" he pleaded. "You have been dreaming."
And under the light of a great red cluster of grapes, pendent from the mouth of a grinning Bacchus, I recognized with horror the yellow mat of hair and freckled face of Billings' cub brother. On the instant, with a bull-like roar, Billings sprang forward, but I was quicker still. But fleeter than either of us to reach the scene were the two elderly men, together with Miss Warfield, the housekeeper, and a couple of the maids. Frances darted like a bird to Foxy Grandpa, and then the figures of the women shut her from view.
Billings and I had paused, half-way to the landing. It looked as though the elder Billings was amply capable of handling the occasion now. He had backed the youth against the wall behind, and his language was of a kind I hated to have my darling hear. Every time the other offered to expostulate, his father broke out again.