"You seem almost astonished to see me," she said. "Even if I hadn't wanted to come, Charley would have insisted on it."
Jimmy gazed hard at both her and Jordan, and noticed that Mrs. Forster seemed a trifle amused.
"Charley?" he said.
"Of course. Hasn't he told you?" said Eleanor; and though she laughed, there was diffidence and pride in her eyes when she glanced at the man beside her. It was also, her brother felt, rather more than the pride of possession.
"I must explain," said Jordan. "When I came off this morning, Jimmy was too sleepy to be entrusted with any information of the kind. Still, I quite think I deserve a few congratulations."
Jimmy looked at him with a faint wrinkling of his brows, and then involuntarily turned toward the rest of the company.
"Well," he said, "I suppose it's only natural, though of course I never expected this."
Mrs. Forster laughed outright. "Then everybody else did, and ventured to approve of it."
Jimmy stretched his hand out, and grasped that of his comrade slowly and tenaciously. "After all, there is nobody I should sooner trust her to, and I don't think you could have got anybody more—capable, generally," he said. "Eleanor, you see, is cleverer than I am."
Eleanor Wheelock naturally understood her brother, and there was whimsical toleration in her smile, while the little twinkle grew more pronounced in Jordan's eyes. He was a shrewd man, and had already formed a reasonably accurate notion of Jimmy and Eleanor Wheelock's respective capabilities.