As he went, her father considered her for a moment, and wondered. Never before had he seen such a look in her eyes as that which she had turned on the queer, vivid stranger so busily engaged at the tray. Polly, and this obscure scientist! After the kind of men whom the girl had known, enslaved, and eluded! Absurd! Yet if it were to be—Mr. Brewster reviewed the events of the afternoon—well, it might be worse.
“By the Lord Harry, he’s a man, anyway!” decided Thatcher Brewster.
Meanwhile, the subject of his musings began to feel like a man once more, instead of like a lath. Having wrought havoc among the edibles, he rose with a sigh.
“If I could have one hour’s sleep,” he said mournfully, “I’d be fit as a cricket.”
“You shall,” said the girl. “Mr. Sherwen says he won’t let you out of the house until it’s dark. And that’s fully an hour.”
“I ought to be on my way back now.”
“Back where? To your mountains?”
“Yes.”
“You’d be recognized and attacked before you could get out of the city. I won’t let you.”
“That wouldn’t do, for a fact. Perhaps it would be safer to wait. I’ve made enough trouble for one day by my blunder-headed thoughtlessness.”