"We must confess," said Mrs. Farnsworth conciliatingly, "that Mr. Singleton is passing through a severe trial. We precipitated ourselves upon him without warning, and immediately involved him in a mesh of mystery. His imagination must have time to adjust itself."
"Ah, the imagination!" sighed Alice with her wistful smile. "How little patience the world has with anything but the soberest facts! Why should we bother about that lunatic Montani or the gentleman immured in the tool-house? I couldn't introduce you to Sir Cecil without anticipating the end of our story; and I want you to keep wondering and wondering about us. It's all so jolly! I love it all! And really you wouldn't spoil it, Bob! It's dreadful to spoil things."
They were spoiling my appetite; I was perfectly aware of that. I had ordered the best luncheon I knew how to compose, and they were doing full justice to it; but I was acting, I knew, like a resentful boy.
"I love you that way," said Alice as I stared vacantly at my plate. "But you really are not making yourself disagreeable to us—really he is not, Constance!"
Mrs. Farnsworth affirmed this. I knew that I was merely being rude, and the consciousness of this was not uplifting. At the luncheon hour the influx of shoppers gives the Tyringham a cheery tone, and all about us were people apparently conversing sanely and happily. The appearance of Uncle Bash's ghost in the familiar dining-room would have been a welcome diversion. I was speculating as to just what he would say about his widow and the whole mess at Barton when Mrs. Farnsworth addressed me pleadingly.
"If you knew that we want you to play with us only a few days longer—three days, shall we say, Alice?—if you knew that then we'll untangle everything, wouldn't you be nice—very nice?"
In spite of myself I couldn't resist this appeal. I was more and more impressed by the fineness, the charm of Mrs. Farnsworth. When she dropped the make-believe foolishness in which she indulged quite as amusingly as Alice, she appeared to be a very sensible person. The humor danced in her eyes now, but her glance was more than an appeal; it was a command.
"If you knew that our troubles are not at all the troubles you're thinking about, but very different——"
"Please pardon me!" I muttered humbly, and wished that Alice were not so bewitching in a sailor hat. It may have been the hat or only Mrs. Farnsworth's pleading tone that brought me to a friendlier attitude toward the universe and its visible inhabitants. The crowd thinned out, but we lingered, talking of all manner of things.
"We must come in again very soon," said Alice. "And next time we shan't run away, which was very naughty. I suppose when you begin a story you just have to keep it going or it will die on your hands. That's the way with our story, you know. Of course it's unkind to mystify you: but you are in the story just as we are."