They were all still working over Keatcham when a bell pealed. Tracy started; but Mercer looked a shade relieved. “They’ve come,” said he.
“They?” repeated the colonel. He scrambled to his feet and gasped.
Miss Smith was coming down the colonnade, but not Miss Smith alone. Aunt Rebecca walked beside her, serene, erect and bearing a small hand-bag. Miss Smith carried a larger bag; and Tracy had possessed himself of a dress-suit case.
“Certainly, Bertie,” remarked his aunt in her softest tone, “I came with Janet. My generation believed in les convenances.”
All the colonel could articulate was a feeble, “And Archie? and Millicent?”
“Haley is staying in your room with Archie. Millicent had retired; if she asks for us in the morning we shall not be up. She has an appointment with Janet, but it isn’t until half-past eleven. Randall has her instructions.”
“But—but—how did you get here?”
Aunt Rebecca drew herself up. “I trust now, Bertie, you will admit that I am as fit as any of you to rough it. If there is one mode of transit I abominate, it is those loathsome, unsanitary, uncivil, joggly street-cars; we came as far as the corner in the street-cars, then we walked. Did we want to give the number to a cab-man, do you suppose? Bertie, have you such a thing as a match about you? I think Janet wants to heat a teaspoonful of water for a strychnine hypodermic.”
CHAPTER XIV
FROM MRS. MELVILLE’S POINT OF VIEW
The Palace Hotel,
San Francisco, March 24, 1906.