CHAPTER XVI—PLAYING WITH BOB
It took a great deal of courage for Bob to go down to breakfast the next morning. In fact, he had never done anything before in his life that demanded so much courage. He pictured his entrance, anticipating what would happen; he didn’t try to deceive himself. The monocle-man would tap him on the shoulder. “You are my prisoner,” he would say. And then it would be “exit” for Bob amid the exclamations and in the face of the accumulated staring of the company.
Bob wasn’t going to play the craven now, though, so he marched down-stairs and into the breakfast-room, his head well up. With that smile on his lips and the frosty light in his blue eyes, he looked not unlike a young Viking fearlessly presenting a bold brow to the enemy while his ship is sinking beneath him. He acted just as if he hadn’t been away and as if nothing had happened.
“Good-morning, people,” he said in his cheeriest.
For a moment there was a tombstone silence while Bob, not seeming to notice it, dropped down in a convenient place at the table. His vis-a-vis, as luck, or ill-luck would have it, was the monocle-man. Bob felt the shivers stealing over him. But the monocle-man, too, acted as if nothing had happened. He didn’t get up and tap Bob on the shoulder. Perhaps he wished to finish his breakfast first.
“Aw!—Have some toast,” he observed to Bob. “Mrs. Ralston’s toast is really delicious.”
“No,” said Bob airily. “I don’t like that English kind of toast. Makes me think of rusk! No taste to it! Give me good old American toast with plenty of butter on it.”
“Aw!” said the monocle-man.
Bob didn’t stop there. He appealed to the bishop and carried the discussion on to the doctor. He even went so far, a daredevil look in his sanguine blue eyes now, as to ask Miss Gerald’s opinion. Miss Gerald, however, pretended not to hear. Her devoted admirer was close at hand and Bob saw the hammer-thrower’s brows knit at sight of him. Bob in his new mood didn’t care a straw now and looked straight back at the hammer-thrower, as if daring him to do his worst. For an instant he thought the hammer-thrower was going to say something, but he didn’t. Perhaps second thought told him it would be better taste to wait, for he lifted his heavy shoulders with rather a contemptuous or pitying shrug and paid no further attention to luckless Bob.
The latter kept up a gay conversation between bites, professing to be quite unaware of a certain extraordinary reticence with which his light persiflage was received. He looked around to see if Gee-gee and Gid-up were anywhere visible and saw that they were not. This did not surprise him, as theatrical ladies are usually late risers and like to breakfast in their rooms; nor would they be apt to mingle promiscuously with the other guests. Mrs. Ralston, Mrs. Dan and Mrs. Clarence were also not about. Bob was thankful Mrs. Ralston needed most of the morning by herself, or with sundry experts, to beautify; he didn’t care to see his hostess just yet. It was hard enough to meet her fair niece, Miss Gerald, under the circumstances.