XXIII
Fanny looked after the disappearing figures. “They seem kind of worried, don’t they?” she said to Guy.
“Oh, you’re always imagining things,” Guy replied, with masculine impatience.
“You say that just because I’m so much cleverer than you are. At school the girls used to call me the barometer. I could always tell just how they felt.”
“Well, if you only knew how I felt at this moment!” Guy exclaimed, ruefully.
Fanny seized both his hands. “Are your hands feverish and clammy? And do you feel cold chills running down your back? That’s the way they feel in novels.” She began to jump up and down, as she always did in moments of excitement. “Now, what are you going to say? Tell me, quick. He’ll be here in two minutes. He said he was coming right down. ’Sh! Here he comes now.”
“This is the most infernal town,” cried Jonathan Wallace, pulling down his cuffs. “If I lived here I’d go crazy from insomnia.” He looked down at Fanny with the resentful air that even the best of fathers sometimes like to assume with their children. “Didn’t you say someone wanted to see me?”
“Yes,” Fanny replied, with a nervous laugh. Then she added, satirically, patting Guy on the back: “This gentleman. I think I’ll get away. Bye-bye, little one.” She danced out of the room, waving her hand to the young fellow, who stood, awkward and flushed, trying to think of something to say.
“Well, sir?” Jonathan Wallace walked toward Guy with his right hand thrust into his coat front. At that moment he appeared especially formidable. Guy noticed that his red face, with its large, hooked nose, made him look curiously like a parrot.