"Certainly. Fiddler says she may have to go to the hospital for a while before coming here, but it's nothing to be worried about. A trifling operation, he says. He's like all doctors. You never can get 'em to commit themselves. I shall go up to see her to-morrow. I've got a little present for her, you know. I've sort of been expecting something from her to-night—a pair of slippers or a half dozen handkerchiefs or something like that—but perhaps they will come in the morning. She never forgets me. Of course, being sick and discouraged may have kept her from—and then again, on the other hand, she may have crochetted me a dressing gown or a fancy waistcoat and prefers to give it to me when I go out to see her to-morrow, not wanting to trust it to the Express Company, don't you know. Well, Dick, how do you like our kitchen?"
"Bully! Come along, Amy. We mustn't be late. See you soon, Mr. Bingle. You must bring Mrs. Bingle up to see the piece as soon as she's able. By George, we ARE doing business, though. Sixteen thousand dollars last week. Turning 'em away every night. Seventeen hundred dollars last night and—"
"Hush, Dick! Mr. Bingle knows you are an author. You don't have to act the part, you know."
"Right you are. It's getting to be a habit. I can't help contrasting this Christmas Eve with the one a year ago. I didn't have ten dollars to my name when I went out to hear you read 'The Christmas Carol,' Mr. Bingle."
"And now I haven't ten dollars to my name," said Mr. Bingle cheerily. "Luck is like the sun, Dick. It doesn't stay up all the time. Sometimes I look back upon the past ten years and wonder if they don't belong to the fellow who wrote the 'Arabian Nights' and not to me. They were not real, not a bit of it. And yet I can't remember ever having found a queer old jar at the seashore, nor having released a good geni from its smoky insides. So I suppose I really must have lived them."
"Don't let yourself get lonely, Mr. Bingle," said Flanders, gripping the other's hand. "Don't allow yourself to mope over the loss of these—ahem! They will all have nice, happy homes and grow up to be splendid—"
"Come on, Dick," called his wife from the little hall, where she was surrounded by a suddenly repressed group of children. She had been whispering something to them, and they were ashamed.
The door-bell gave forth its stuttering tinkle once more, and again the impassive Watson stalked to the entry. The next instant a white-furred figure bounded through the door, rushed across the room and precipitated itself forcibly into the arms of Mr. Bingle, who barely had time to prepare himself for the onslaught.
It was Kathleen. Behind her stalked the elegant Mr. and Mrs. Sydney Force.
There had been a time when Mrs. Force scarcely deigned to notice Miss Amy Fairweather. But there is a great difference between a poor governess and a popular goddess. The bright and shining star of Broadway, with a suite of rooms at the Plaza, a fascinating and much-courted husband, and a firm grasp on the shifting attention of the idle rich, was a person to be recognised even by the charitably inclined. And so Mrs. Force neglected to employ her lorgnon in scrutinising Miss Colgate, and made the most of an opportunity to release a long-suppressed effusiveness.