“‘Call me neither “monsieur” nor “monseigneur,”’ said the prisoner—‘Call me “Accursed.”’
“He passed on, and the iron door creaked after him.”
“Ten o’clock!”
“Oh-h!”
“It’s not—not quite ten. Your watch’s slow.”
“Ten minutes after,” declared Cheerio, hiding a smile as he glanced at his watch in the slightly waning light.
A murmur of protest from Hilda, and a growl from Sandy, ready to argue the point. It seemed as if they always reached the most thrilling part of the narrative when “ten o’clock” the limit hour set for the end of the reading would come and Cheerio would, with seeming reluctance, close the enthralling book.
The readings had been substituted for the daily riding trips. The adventures of “The Three Musketeers” were proving of even more enthralling interest to Sandy than the fossilized bones of the early inhabitants of the North American continent. No dime novel of the most lurid sort had had the power to fascinate or appeal to the imagination of the young McPhersons as this masterpiece of the elder Dumas. They were literally transplanted in thought into the France of the Grande Monarche.
Hilda indeed so lost herself each night in the chronicle that she forgot her grudge against the reader, and sat on one side of him almost as closely, peering over his arm at the page, as Sandy on the other side. Of course, the steps were not wide and barely accommodated the three and Hilda’s place was next to the wall. Cheerio sat between the two.
After the readings there would follow an excited discussion of the story that was almost as interesting as the tale itself. It was astonishing how much this Englishman knew about France in the time of Louis the XIV. Sandy would pepper him with questions, and sometimes sought to entrap him into returning to the tale.