He left the office to a perturbed atmosphere. Happie was glad that this was her last day, though when it ended the two elder clerks bade her good-bye with unmistakable regret, and Mr. Felton thanked her solemnly for her great kindness in filling her brother's place and for her fidelity and cleverness in his interests.
At the tea room, when Happie arrived to go home with Margery and Laura, they were half shocked, half amused, and wholly impressed by her adventure of that day. Happie described her rescuer in enthusiastic terms and Margery was greatly interested.
"I should really think, from what you say, that it was some one I know!" she cried, as they started homeward and Happie paused for breath.
Happie caught the note in her voice as she made the discovery, and tossed her head. "No, indeed, Margery!" she declared positively. "This man was not a bit like any one you ever described. He is simple, has lovely manners, is not the least speck solemn nor affected. And handsome, and as manly!"
"Yes," said Margery quietly. "All that is precisely like some one I know, but of course I don't know your knight. How funny the boy must have looked, getting set down and his ears boxed! And how thoroughly he deserved it! But it was rather horrid, Happie dear. I'm glad that to-morrow Bob can resume his desk."
In the morning there was a little stir of excitement in the Patty-Pans, for Bob was going out, and it takes no more than that to agitate a family wrapped up in one another, as was this family of boy and girls, "and one dear mother," Polly added.
Gretta was to go with Bob to the office door, her strong shoulder, strengthened by hay-making and gardening, was the most reliable in case Bob's foot proved weak and played him false. The girls all hovered around seeing them start, till Bob laughed at their anxious faces. "You'd think I was valuable bric-à-brac!" he cried, bursting in on Margery's grandmotherly injunctions to watch for stray bits of ice on the sidewalk, and to be sure the car was stopped before he left it.
"The man of the house is more than bric-à-brac," said Happie.
"Man! He isn't seventeen!" cried Laura.
"Just as much a man as this is a house," retorted Happie. And they all laughed, for the beloved little Patty-Pans flat was small, and nobody could deny it was crowded.