He turned to go, when Alex. detained him a moment.
“Who were the people you were with just now,—the old couple and the girl?”
Amy and Ruth were both talking to Craig, who answered, hurriedly and very low:
“Why, don’t you know Joel Pledger and his wife? I thought everybody knew him. The girl is their grand-niece, come to see the city for a few days;—beautiful, isn’t she?—and now I really must go. Good-by again.”
He was gone, and Alex. sat down, disappointed and annoyed that he had learned so little. Craig had said Joel Pledger, but Alex. understood him Old Pledger, and he repeated to himself “Old Pledger! as if that would tell me who he is, or as if I cared. It’s the girl whose name I want. Why couldn’t he have told it instead of saying their grand-niece from the country and that she was beautiful? Of course she is. Anybody can see that. Old Pledger! That’s a good name for him; I don’t believe though, that the girl is a Pledger. The name don’t suit her. I wonder how I can find out who she is, and why need Craig have been in such an awful hurry. Old Pledger! That don’t sound as if he thought a great deal of him. Well, he’s only her great-uncle.”
By this time the opera was beginning to have some interest for Alex. The prima donna was excelling herself, and the house was ringing with applause, the girl clapping with the rest, and actually making Old Pledger move his cane up and down a little briskly, while the old lady only showed occasional signs of nodding and was promptly pulled up by the girl. For the remainder of the evening Alex. paid pretty good attention to the play, turning his eyes occasionally to the girl, whose interest never flagged, and whose cheeks were like roses and whose eyes were shining with excitement when the performance was over. Alex. had a glimpse of Old Pledger’s stooping shoulders and Mrs. Pledger’s three-years-old bonnet and big-sleeved sacque, and the girl with her wrap on her arm, and then he went out into the crowd, which jostled and surged and pushed him until he found himself close to the Pledgers, and saw the girl in her golf cape, with the high collar drawn up around her ears, for the wintry night was cold. His ladies wore soft, fur-lined opera cloaks, and he did not suppose they owned a golf cape, or would wear one on such an occasion if they did. Well, it didn’t matter what they wore. A golf cape looked well on the slim, straight figure, which was finally lost in the throng.
“Going home in a street car or on the elevated. I’d give a good deal to know where they live. I’ll find out if I can,” he thought, as he followed his party to their carriage and was driven to Delmonico’s.
Here he met several acquaintances, and in the talk and excitement he forgot Old Pledger and the girl until he was home and in bed, when they came back to him with a persistency which kept him wakeful as he wondered who the deuce the Pledgers were and how he could find out.
CHAPTER II
ALEX.’S LETTERS
After waiting an hour for her young people, Mrs. Marsh sat down to breakfast alone, and was finishing her coffee when Alex. came in. He had thought of the Pledgers while dressing, and laughed at himself for being so interested in a strange girl. “I don’t quite understand it, although it is like me to be attracted by every new face if it is at all out of the common,” he thought, “and she was rather uncommon in that expensive box with Old Pledger and his wife, who looked like a muff, and the girl so fair, and without the flumadiddles Amy and Ruth and the rest of ’em wear to such places. And then she had a striking face, though I might not know it again if I saw it.”