OOD-BYE, Hazel,”
“Good-bye, Starlight,”
“Good-bye, Josephine,”
“Good-bye, Cousin Harry,”
“Good-bye, Flutters.” Quite a medley of good-byes, to be sure, but no more than were needed, for Harry and Starlight, once more aboard of the “Gretchen,” were fast gliding out on to the river, and Josephine and Hazel and Flutters were being left behind on the wharf. The little prison-ship party had had their supper, and now Harry and Starlight were off for Paulus Hook; it was high time, too, that they were, since they had already been absent a day longer than Harry had planned, and Aunt Frances would naturally begin to feel worried. Little Flutters cut a queer figure as he stood there on the boating dock in the moonlight. Hans Van Wyck's clothes, done up in a snug bundle, were already on their way back to their lawful owner, so that he had need to resort once more to the spangles and tinsel of his circus costume. By way of making up for insufficient clothing, Mrs. Boniface had thrown a shawl about him, one end of which Flutters allowed to trail behind, pinning the other close about his throat, with one corner thrown over his left shoulder.
“We must do something about some clothes for you, Flutters, right away,” Hazel remarked, as they turned to walk up from the wharf, when, amid the darkening shadows of the river, the “Gretchen's” sail was no longer visible. “Starlight and I hoped Mrs. Van Wyck would offer to give us that suit of Hans's to keep when he stopped to see her this afternoon and told her about you, but she did not propose anything of the kind. She only said 'it was very inconvenient for Hans not to have them, and she hoped we'd manage to get them back to-night.'”
“And you have managed, haven't you, Miss Hazel?” Flutters answered, as if the managing were a matter to be proud of; and, mimicking a sort of stage stride such as he had often witnessed in tragical circus pantomimes, he apparently bestowed far more attention on the sweep of his majestic train than on what Hazel was saying.
“Yes, of course, I sent them back; what else could I do?”—this last rather impatiently, because of Flutters's exasperating unconcern __"but how are you going to manage without them is what I'd like to know.”..
Flutters gave Hazel a comical little look. “With tights and shawls, I s'pose, Miss Hazel, unless the Captain felt like as he could buy some for me.”