“Here I am!” exclaimed Alvin, coming in red and shiny from much soap and water. “It is like old days in the prairie to get an unexpected visitor. Now we will fall to and eat a good supper. It will be my second, but I figure that I have earned it.”
“I can never thank you sufficiently for all your kindness and hospitality,” said Philip.
“There is nothing to thank me for,” pronounced Alvin.
“I feel quite ashamed,” said Philip. “I have got you all out of your beds, and given no end of trouble.”
“Come and have supper,” was the rejoinder.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
IN THE DEPTHS OF DESPAIR
It was on the tenth of November that Philip Barrimore received a letter from Dan Webster. That was about a fortnight after the fire at the bungalow, and Philip, who had refused to go home to Hawk’s Nest while the damage to his place was being repaired, had been staying in Brighton. He was still there, and the letter had been forwarded by the repentant and forgiven Davis (who owned that he lit a pipe, throwing down the match, before leaving the bungalow).
Dan offered his sympathy, especially regarding the loss of the manuscript. He had only just heard about the fire from Mr. Burns.
“It is hard luck!” he wrote. “If my ‘Madonna’ had been so destroyed, I should have felt just suicidal. My ‘Madonna’! ah! it is to bring my good fortune! Sir Edwin Buckland has seen it, and declares it will not only be hung in the Academy, but will cause a sensation. He has a big voice in the hanging committee, as you know, so I am confident—I think justly. But it is not fair to flaunt my happiness in your face, when you must be so down in the dumps. I wish I could say something to really cheer you, old man! The only thing I can think of is that you are getting a rattling good advertisement out of the business. I have seen any number of sympathetic ‘pars.’ How strange that you never discovered the origin of the fire. I expect Davis dropped a lighted match on the rug and it smouldered.
“I have just had a letter from Mr. Alvin, and, oddly enough, he makes no reference to the fire, though Mr. Burns tells me Alvin extinguished it.