"She's so strong and fine, so independent, so modern!" Edward Ambrose laughed his rare note, yet for some reason it was without gaiety.
The truth was he had long been deeply in love with Mary Pridmore, but it was only in certain moments that he realized it.
"I suppose you knew Klondyke?" said the Sailor, wistfully.
"Her brother Jack? Oh, yes. He's thrown back to some Viking strain. One can hardly imagine his being the brother of Otto and the son of his mother or the son of his father."
"I can imagine Mary being the sister of Klondyke," said the Sailor.
"Really! I never see her at quite that angle myself. He's a funny chap." Edward Ambrose was really not thinking at all of any mere male member of the Pridmore family. "Might have done well in diplomacy. Son of his father. Ought to have gone far." Again Edward Ambrose loosed his wonderful note, but it had nothing to do with Jack Pridmore. "And what does he do? And yet, the odd thing is he may be right."
"Klondyke's a white man from way back," said the Sailor abruptly.
The phrase was new to Edward Ambrose, who, as became a man with a keen literary sense, turned it over in his mind. And then he suddenly remembered that he owed it to his friends, the Pridmores, to be a little more guarded in his utterances concerning them.
"Good night, Henry," he said, offering his hand at the corner of Albemarle Street.
In the same moment, a human derelict fastened upon the Sailor, who had to send him away with the price of a bed before he could return his friend's good night.