"No, sir. I don't know."
Dr. Harrison's further questions and remarks were cut short by the entrance of the very person referred to; who coming up with his usual light, alert step, held out his hand first of all to the questioner.
"Good evening, doctor!—how do you do again? Miss Faith, may I take you away from these beauties?" And the released hand was offered to her. She put hers in it very willingly but very silently; Faith dared not say a word to him about the Rhododendrons or about anything else.
"Ah, you have two hands again," said Dr. Harrison, "and you turn it against me!"
"Not that fact—" Mr. Linden said as he went off. And then slackening his step, he talked or made Faith talk—and laugh—every inch of the way into the room where all the rest were clustered ready for blind man's buff. It was a triumph of his skill,—or of his power,—for she had left the Rhododendrons in a mood most shy and quiet, and disposed to keep so. Dr. Harrison had not followed them, but soon made his entrance upon the company by another door.
"What is going on? or off, Mrs. Stoutenburgh?" he whispered to that lady.
"Why the bandage is going on, and we're going off," said she laughing.
"Will you be blinded first, doctor?"
"Blind man's buff!" said the doctor shrugging his shoulders comically. "Barbarous! I would rather 'go off' too—but anything to please you, Mrs. Stoutenburgh. A game to see how much a man without his five senses can do against other people who have them." But the doctor gallantly stepped up to Mrs. Somers.
"I represent the forlorn hope for the evening, aunt Ellen. Has anybody volunteered to be the first victim?"
"You are the last person in the room that ought to volunteer," said
Mrs. Somers,—"however, blindness is proverbial in some cases. Miss
Essie will bandage your eyes, Julius—and use her own for you in the
meanwhile, I dare say. Miss Essie, here is a candidate."