The re-meeting was effected by the hatstand, where Charles had stood on the day he had borrowed the book he now came to return. Water had flowed under London Bridge since then. Mr. Jenney, owner of the celebrated ring, was presented. He was a long-legged, gangling, curly-headed youth, with a face that was beautiful in its way, no less; and it must have been a frank face, too, since Charles, the observer, immediately had the fellow's whole secret. Here was Mr. Jenney's fair ideal, his high star and lady of dreams; and his full reward for his pure devotion was to be kept hanging on, a masculine anchor to windward—just in case, as they say. Still, he might prove the deus ex machina of the issue yet.
At the moment, however, little was seen of Mr. Jenney, since, almost in the first breath, his star said: "Oh, Dan, father's in now, and he'll want so to see you!"—and Mr. Jenney straightway withdrew obediently. One gathered that obedience was his fatal quality.
Thus the unheroic Charles confronted his Temporary Spinster at last, in her dark home-hall. And she, not guessing the new philosophic resistance within him, said, with the gayest confident air, and no little archness, too:—
"Well, Mr. Garrott!... Did you decide to pay your party-call?"
Charles smiled.
"I've been promising myself to come in for some time," he said pleasantly. "I had several excellent excuses, you see. For one thing, there was your book, which I've appropriated all this time—"
"Oh, that! I just saw it there—and thought I must have missed you! That would have been too mean, after all this time!" She glanced toward the hatstand, adding: "And—Mr. Manford gave you that other one to bring back, I suppose?"
"No—ah—we came together, but, of course, he left when he found that you were out. I wanted especially to pay my respects to your father, so—"
"I'm awfully glad he kept you for me.... How are you now? You don't know how I've missed you, since you had to stop walking entirely!"
"I've been extremely well, thank you. Or—at least—I've been pretty well—"