“First at table,” ended Lowell. “What time is it?”
“Twelve after two,” answered Clem. “Guess I’d better mosey along and see if Jim Todd’s arrived.”
“Oh, don’t go,” protested Lowell. “We’re just beginning to like you. What time’s he due?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he won’t get in until late. I suppose it takes quite a while to get here from Maine.”
“Sure. Two or three days. You do the first thousand miles on snowshoes. Then you take a dog-sled at the trading post—”
“You’re a nut,” laughed Clem. “I’m sorry for you, Hick. How do you think you’re going to get through nearly nine months with him?”
“Oh, he won’t get funny with me,” answered Hick comfortably. “I’ll give him a paddling every now and then. I’ll make a new man of him by Spring.”
“You, you big flat tire!” responded Lowell. “It would take three like you to paddle me! If it wasn’t so hot I’d box your ears for making a crack like that right in front of visitors!”
Clem’s progress from Lykes to Haylow was retarded by encounters with several acquaintances, and once, having passed the corner of his own building, he spent ten minutes with his arms on the window-sill of a lower-floor room talking to the inmates of it. But he reached his corridor eventually and found the door of Number 15 ajar. As he had closed it behind him in the morning he reached the conclusion that Jim had arrived, and when he had thrust it farther inward and crossed the threshold he decided that the conclusion was correct. Then, as the occupant of the room straightened up from the business of unpacking a suit-case opened on the window-seat, he was in doubt for an instant. If this was Jim, what had happened to him?