“Bon jour, Monsieur Rossiter,” fell suddenly on Phil’s ear, and turning, he saw Pierre, who handed him a dainty note, and waited while he read it.
It was dated at “Hetherton Place, 9 o’clock A.M., and read as follows:
“Dear Phil:
“What a simpleton you must be to think I was in earnest when I told you to go and never come back again. I know I tried you awfully and so you did me, and you called me such dreadful names—a vixen, a virago, a cat, and a termagant, and the dear knows what, and I called you a bore, and a spooney, and said I hated you, but, Phil, I do not, and I am just as lonesome without you as I can be, and last night, after I went to my room, I cried real hard, and said to myself, ‘I am sorry, Phil,’ and I am, and want you to forgive me, and come right over here with Pierre and stay to lunch. I have ordered broiled chicken, with pop-overs and maple sirup. You know you can eat a dozen. I shall be out on the rocks, and see you when you come down the hill, and I will tie my pocket-handkerchief to my parasol and wave it for a signal. And now you will come, won’t you, and we will make it up, and never, never fight again?
“Your repentant
“Queenie.”
Phil Rossiter was not the man to withstand an appeal like this, and, as he read it, India and everything else was forgotten in his intense desire to fly to the girl waiting for him.
Mr. Beresford saw Pierre hand him the note, knew it was from Reinette, and watched him as he read it, while his color came and went like that of some young schoolgirl, and he was not greatly surprised when Phil said to him, as he rose to leave the office:
“By the way, I’ve been thinking it over, and I don’t believe I care to go to India; it is too far away. There is Will Granger—just the fellow they want, and he needs money badly; offer it to him.”
Phil was in the street by this time, and ten minutes later he was galloping toward Hetherton Place and the girl whose signal he saw as she waved it aloft to let him know she was there. And Phil rode hard and fast until he was at her side, sitting just where Mr. Beresford had stood the night before and asked her to be his wife.