“We all have had a good time at the Hotel Helicon, but our sojourn upon the heights of Mt. Boab has been cut short by a certain chain of mishaps over which we have had no control, and to-morrow we go away, doubtless forever. I feel like saying that I harbor no unpleasant recollections of the days we have spent together.”
Cattleton sprung to his feet to move a vote of thanks “to the public-spirited and benevolent man who built this magnificent hotel and threw open its doors to us.”
It was carried.
“Now then,” said Lucas, adjusting his glasses and speaking in his gravest chest-tones, “I move that it be taken as the sense of this assembly, that it is our duty to draw upon our publisher for money enough to take us home.”
The response was overwhelming.
Dunkirk felt the true state of affairs. He arose, his broad face wreathed with genial smiles, and said:
“To the certain knowledge of your unhappy publisher your accounts are already overdrawn, but in view of the rich material you have been gathering of late, your publisher will honor you draughts to the limit of your expenses home.”
Never did happier people go to bed. The last sleep in Hotel Helicon proved to be the sweetest.
Far in the night, it is true, some one sang loudly but plaintively under Miss Moyne’s window until the sheriff awoke and sallied forth to end the serenade with some remarks about “cracking that eejit’s gourd;” but there was no disturbance, the sounds blending sweetly with the dreams of the slumberers. They all knew that it was Crane, poor fellow, who had finally torn himself away from his father’s fascinating uncle.