“He’ll have his hands full with Helga. Please wait, Dad. I won’t be ten minutes.”
From downstairs rose a banging of doors, a tramping of feet and the gruff voice of Johnston, the host, mingled with the gentle remonstrances of his wife, in which a certain insistence upon rubber boots was discernible. On the other side of Colton there was a swishing and thumping, as of one in hasty search for some article that had declined to stay put. “Where the devil is that sweater?” came in a sort of growling appeal to whatever Powers of Detection might be within hearing.
“Don’t swear, Mr. Haynes,” sounded in tones of soft gaiety from the end room, and the sweaterless one responded: “The half of it hath not been told you. Got a sweater to lend a poor man with a weak chest, Miss Ravenden?”
“I’m just getting into my one and only garment of the kind,” was the muffled answer.
A second woman’s voice, low, but with a wonderful, deep, full-throated sonance in it, broke in:
“My dream has come true,” it said gravely. “The ship is coming in on Graveyard Point. How long, Petit Père?”
“With you in a minute, Princess. Just let me get into my boots,” returned the voice of the seeker, but so altered by a certain caressing fellowship that Colton was half-minded to think he heard a new participant.
“Are you dressed already, Helga?” demanded Miss Ravenden. “How do you do it?”
“I hadn’t undressed, Dolly,” said the other girl, gravely. “I knew—I felt that something——”
She paused.