When the four-seated livery wagon drove up to take the gunning party to the train, the boy lingered behind the others and then hurried back to where Athalie was standing, white-faced, tearless, staring at the closed door of the room where they had taken her father.
Bailey Junior's touch on her arm made her turn: "I am sorry," he said. "I hope you will not be very unhappy.... And—here is a Christmas present—"
He took the dazed child's icy little hand in his, and, fumbling the business rather awkwardly, he finally contrived to snap a strap-watch over the delicate wrist. It was the one he had been wearing.
"Good-bye, Athalie," he murmured, very red.
The girl gazed at him out of her lovely confused eyes for a moment. But when she tried to speak no sound came.
"Good-bye," he said again, choking slightly. "I'll surely, surely come back to see you. Don't be unhappy. I'll come."
But it was many years before he returned to the Hotel Greensleeve.