"We know you said it in joke; but the only straw to float Diane's idea is our kinship, Mr. Edgerton. And we grasped at it—for your sake."
"Please cling to it for your own sakes," too, he said, also very serious now; "it may become a plank to float us all.... I realize the point you are straining out of kindness to me. If I accept shelter here for a day or two, I shall know very well what it costs you to offer it."
"It doesn't cost us anything," interrupted Diana hastily. "Silvette meant only that you should understand why our consciences and common sense sanction your remaining if we remain."
"You must remain anyway!" he said.
"So must you, cousin," said Silvette, laughing. "Anyway, you've probably sent your trunks here—haven't you?"
"By jinks! I forgot that!" he exclaimed. "I believe that racket on the stairs means that my trunks are arriving!"
It did mean exactly that. And when Edgerton went out to the landing he encountered two expressmen staggering under the luggage, and, behind them, the terrified janitor who had returned, and who, on the advent of the baggage, had hurried upstairs to summarily evict the illegal lodgers before Edgerton's arrival.
Now, at sight of Edgerton himself, the Irishman turned white with horror and clung to the banisters for support; but Edgerton only said pleasantly: "Hello, Mike! I hope you've made my cousins comfortable. I'll be here for a day or two. Bring up any mail there may be for me, and see that the landing is properly dusted after this."
He came back to the studio intensely amused.
"I thought that guilty Irishman would faint on the stairs when he saw me," he said. "I merely said that I hoped he'd looked out for my cousins' comfort.... You know," he added laughingly, "I'm anything except angry at him."