"He asked me to tell you," said Clare, not looking up from the fly she was tying at the window, "that he thought you were the bravest girl he had ever met."
So he understood now, when others had explained it to him. "No, Clare," I said coldly, "he did not say that; he said 'the bravest little girl.'" For indeed, lying upstairs with the window open I had heard him set off on his long drive to Laerdalsören. As for father he was half-proud and half-ashamed of my foolishness, and wholly at a loss to think how I could have made the mistake.
"You've generally some common-sense, my dear," he said that day at dinner, "and how in the world you could have been so ready to fancy the man was in danger, I--can--not--imagine!"
"Father," Clare put in suddenly, "your elbow is upsetting the salt."
And as I had to move my seat at that moment to avoid the glare of the stove which was falling on my face, we never thought it out.
CHAPTER II
HIS STORY
I was not dining out much at that time, partly because my acquaintance in town was limited, and partly because I cared little for it. But these were pleasant people, the old gentleman witty and amusing, the children, lively girls, nice to look at and good to talk with. All three had a holiday flavour about them wholesome to recall in Scotland Yard; and as I had expected that, playtime over, I should see no more of them, I was pleased to find that Mr. Guest had not forgotten me, and pleased also--foreseeing that we should kill our fish over again--to regard his invitation to dine at a quarter to eight as a royal command.
But if I took it so, I was wanting in the regal courtesy to match. What with one delay owing to work which would admit of none, and another caused by a cabman strange to the ways of town, it was fifteen minutes after the hour named when I reached Bolton Gardens. A stately man, so like the Queen's Counsel, that it was plain upon whom the latter modelled himself, ushered me into the dining-room, where Guest greeted me kindly, and met my excuses by apologies on his part--for preferring, I suppose, the comfort of eleven people to mine. Then he took me down the table, and said, "My daughter," and Miss Guest shook hands with me and pointed to the chair at her left. I had still, as I unfolded my napkin, to say, "Clear, if you please," and then I was free to turn and apologise to her--feeling a little shy, and being, as I have said, a somewhat infrequent diner out.
I think that I never saw so remarkable a likeness--to her younger sister--in my life. She might have been little Bab herself, but for her dress and, of course, some differences. Miss Guest could not be more than nineteen, in form almost as fairy-like as the little one, and with the same child-like innocent look in her face. She had the big, grey eyes, too, that were so charming in Bab; but hers were more tender and thoughtful, and a thousand times more charming. Her hair too was brown and wavy; only, instead of hanging loose or in a pig-tail anywhere and anyhow in a fashion I well remembered, it was coiled in a coronal on the shapely little head, that looked Greek, and in its gracious, stately, old-fashioned pose was quite unlike Bab's. Her dress, of some creamy, gauzy stuff, revealed the prettiest white throat in the world, and arms decked in pearls, and these, of course, no more recalled my little fishing mate than the sedate self-possession and dignity of the girl, as she talked to her other neighbour, suggested Bab making pancakes and chattering with the landlady's children in her wonderfully acquired Norse. It was not Bab in fact: and yet it might have been: an etherealised, queenly womanly Bab, who presently turned to me--