“You'll make us cry if you talk like that,” said Mrs. Darrell. “Alice has nearly cried her eyes out already.”
“Never mind, our lease of this place won't be out for two years yet, and we can come back if the other don't suit,” said Clarence encouragingly.
Two days after, the Darrells left Alameda on their way to San Diego, stopping for a couple of days only at San Francisco. On board the steamer Clarence met Mr. Alfred Holman, who had accompanied his daughters and now placed them under Clarence's care—“According to instructions from Miss Mercedes”—Mr. Holman added, making Clarence's blood rush to his head, as it always did whenever that sweetest of all names was mentioned in his presence. “Tell the Alamares I shall be down soon. I am only waiting for Tom Scott to escort me.” So saying, Mr. Holman laughed and hurriedly kissing his daughters, ran down the gang plank.
Clarence lost no time in presenting the Misses Holman to his mother, sisters and brothers, all of whom received them with politeness, though with different degrees of warmth, according to the natural share of affability or that diffidence which half of Darrell's children inherited from him, especially the two eldest daughters. The amiability of Alice and her mother's gentle, winning ways, however, soon dispelled the damp chill that Jane and Lucy's reserve generally managed to throw over strangers, thus before the steamer got under way, all were conversing and laughing like old friends, discussing things in general and people in particular.
“I think you have made a conquest,” said Amelia Holman to Alice. “Or perhaps two, for I saw a little yellow haired man with a very red neck, come this way and look at you. Then a loose jointed fellow who walks as if his feet are too heavy to lift and just drags them, follows, and he too looks at you beseechingly.”
“Mercy! I don't want to be so fascinating as all that might indicate,” said Alice, laughing, and a little man gesticulating, and a big man with shuffling gait and hands in the pockets of his pantaloons, listening wearily, were seen coming.
“I know who they are,” said Clarence. “The little one is married, so Alice can rest her hopes on the big footed one only.”
“Gracious, how very repulsive the small one is,” Corina exclaimed.
“Who are they?” Mrs. Darrell asked when they had turned to go back.
“The large fellow is Dick Mason, brother-in-law of the little red-skinned one, who told me his name is Peter Roper, and he is a lawyer bound for San Diego to practice law there (no matter by what means), he says. He gave me this information himself when I went to check our baggage. He introduced himself and his brother Dick on the strength of his being acquainted with father. He also asked permission to present his wife, to my mother and sisters.”