Perhaps the expression of astonishment on the man’s face was the strongest of the three. His mouth was quite wide open, and his eyes were staring curiously, with a look within them that suggested that he had not quite succeeded in taking in the details of the picture before him—that he had not succeeded in reconciling all that he saw with the actualities of life.
Both the girls perceived in a moment that he had just awakened; but this fact did not prevent their being paralysed for the moment—for several moments. The moments went on into minutes, until the whole thing had the note of the child’s game of “Who speaks first?”
It was this broadening of an impressive silence into a child’s comedy that was the saving of the situation. A smile, to which his open mouth lent itself quite readily, came over the young man’s face—he was a young man, and his face was still younger—and, after a maidenly hesitancy of a few seconds, the girls also smiled. His smile broadened into a grin, and both girls broke into a peal of laughter.
He pulled himself round in his chair and got upon his feet, still grinning, and then they saw that he was just what girls accustomed to tall men would call short, or what girls accustomed to short men would call medium-sized. He had very short hair of an indefinite shade of brown, and his mouth, when he grinned, was well proportioned, if it was designed to make a gap touching the lobe of each ear.
He stood up before them and shook himself out, as it seemed, after the manner of a newly awakened dog. Then he took in a reef or two (also speaking figuratively) of his mouth, and it became quite ordinary. He bowed as awkwardly as most men do in ordinary circumstances, and this fact was pleasing to the girls; no girl who is worth anything tolerates a man who makes a graceful bow.
“This is an unexpected pleasure,” he said. “That is—for me; it can’t be the same for you—that is, of course it’s unexpected, but little enough of the pleasure. Only if I had known—you didn’t say you were coming, you know—maybe you are in the habit of coming every day.”
The girls shook their heads; both glanced toward the window. He followed their example.
“Gloriana!” he said, “it has been raining after all.”
“Yes,” said Priscilla. “It has been a thunderstorm—a terrible thunderstorm!”
“You don’t say so! Long ago?”