As the girls ascended the hill, the occupant of the hammock rose and flung away his cigar. He was a dapper little man, and walked down the steep path with a jaunty ease which so strikingly escaped vulgarity as to suggest the danger.
“Dear Cousin Nina!” he exclaimed. “Miss Shropshire, you will tell her that I am Richard? Will you pardon me for taking two great liberties,—first, coming here, and then, taking possession of your hammock and smoking? The first I couldn’t help. The last—well, I have been waiting two hours.”
“I am glad you have made yourself at home,” said Nina, perfunctorily; she had conceived a violent dislike for him. “Your trip must have been very tiresome.”
“It was, indeed. This California is all very well to look at, but for travelling comforts—my word! However, I am not regretting. I cannot tell you how much I have wanted—”
“You must be very hungry. There is the first dinner-bell. Are you dusty? Would you like to clean up? Go to papa’s room—that one.
“Detestable man!” she said, as he disappeared. “I don’t believe particularly in presentiments, but I felt as if my evil genius were bearing down upon me. And such a smirk! He looks like a little shop-keeper.”
“I think he cultivates that grin to conceal the natural expression of his mouth—which is by no means unlike a wolf’s. But he is a harmless little man enough, I have no doubt. I’ve been hasty and mistaken too often; only it’s a bore, having to entertain him.”
But Dr. Clough assumed the burdens of entertaining. He talked so agreeably during dinner, told Nina so much of London that she wished to know, betrayed such an exemplary knowledge of current literature, that her aversion was routed for the hour, and she impulsively invited him to remain a day or two. He accepted promptly, played a nimble game of croquet after supper, then took them for a sail on the lake. He had a thin well-trained tenor voice which blended fairly well with Miss Shropshire’s metallic soprano; and the two excited the envy of the frogs and the night-birds. He was evidently a man quick to take a hint, for he treated Nina exactly as he treated Molly: he was merely a traveller in a strange land, delighted to find himself in the company of two charming women.