She gave him her hand again, and then after a number of very cordial and direct good-bys which Klondyke himself could not have bettered, she went downstairs gayly with her host.
"Tell me, Mary," said Edward Ambrose on the way down, "who in the world is Klondyke?"
"It's Jack," she said. "They were together on board the brigantine Excelsior—although that's not the real name of it."
"How odd!" said Edward Ambrose. "But what a fellow he is not to have said so. When one remembers how he gloated over the yarn one would have thought——"
"But how should he know? It must have been years ago. Yet the strange thing is he remembers Jack and he knew I was his sister because we are so exactly alike, which I thought very tactless."
"Naturally. Did you like him?" The question came with very swift directness.
"He's amazing." The answer was equally swift, equally direct. "He is the only author I have ever met who comes near to being——"
"To being what?" Mary Pridmore had suddenly remembered that she was being escorted downstairs by a distinguished man of letters.
"Do you press the question?"
"Certainly I press the question."