"What's keeping Dale? Prob'bly hanging 'round the Inn!"
Mrs. Moira smothered the quick retort that sprang to her lips in defense of her boy.
"He'll be here any minute," she said instead, comfortingly. "There he is now!" Her quick ear had caught a step outside.
Beryl, not Dale, opened the door and confronted them. Suppressed excitement, impatience, eagerness, an inward disgust of herself for being a "selfish thing anyway" combined to give Beryl's face such an unnatural pallor and haggard tensity of expression that big Danny whirled his chair toward her and Mrs. Lynch caught her hands over her heart.
"Beryl?" she cried, standing quite still.
Beryl walked to her and very quietly gathered her into her young arms.
"Don't look so scared, Mom, dear. Oh, don't cry! Why, I'm near crying myself! After I've told you all that has happened I shall just bawl. I'm too dreadfully happy. Sit down here, Mom, and hold my hand tight. Wait—I must take my things off first."
In a twinkling she had her stage "set" for her surprise. Strangely stirred herself, she had to gulp once or twice before she could begin her story. It was difficult to keep it coherent, too, because Mrs. Moira interrupted her so often with little unnecessary questions.
"Did you really go to New York?"
"And 'twas all night you stayed at the Allendyces themselves?"