"You all think Mr. Johns is very good in his part, don't you?" said Muriel, nervously conscious that they had been silent too long. American men, she had noticed, expected the girls to do the most of the talking; and, somehow, the girls did.
"Why, yes, especially in 'Tell,' don't you?"
"Well, I—I don't always understand, you know. And the last night we rehearsed, after we went to that dinner at the Ellises', I couldn't even make out some of the words he said, he spoke so——"
"He—he wasn't very well—we had to call the rehearsal off, you remember?" interrupted the young man hastily. Muriel was surprised to see him redden and avoid her eyes. There was an awkward pause—the kind of pause that, had Muriel been an American girl, with their uncanny sharpness of intuition, she would not have allowed to occur. But, had Muriel been an American girl, this history would have remained forever unwritten. But for her visit to the Pallinders' there would have been no 'Tell,' no 'Mrs. Tankerville,' no dinner at Doctor Vardaman's—who can say what might have happened instead?
"Ted can imitate Billy Rice first-rate," said J. B., anxious to steer gracefully away from an uncomfortable situation. "We had a minstrel-show one time, and he made up to look like Rice and sang that song of his:
"Arthur, they say, will em-i-grate,"
"Then all the rest of us had to shout, you know,
"WHEN?"
"Bye-and-bye!