If he had warmed to his work before, he warmed still more after this. Miss Alicia was drawn into it again, and followed his fanciful plans with a new fervor. They were like two children who had played at make-believe until they had lost sight of commonplace realities.
Miss Alicia had lived among small economies and could be of great assistance to him. They made lists and added up lines of figures until the fine, huge room and its thousands of volumes melted away. In the great hall, guarded by warriors in armor, the powdered heads of the waiting footmen drooped and nodded while the prices of pounds of butter and sugar and the value of potatoes and flour and nutmegs were balanced with a hectic joy, and the relative significance of dollars and cents and shillings and half-crowns caused Miss Alicia a mild delirium.
By the time that she had established the facts that a shilling was something like twenty-five cents, a dollar was four and twopence, and twenty-five dollars was over five pounds, it was past midnight.
They heard the clock strike the half-hour, and stopped to stare at each other.
Tembarom got up with yet another laugh.
“Say, I mustn’t keep you up all night,” he said. “But haven’t we had a fine time? I feel as if I’d been there.”
They had been there so entirely that Miss Alicia brought herself back with difficulty.
“I can scarcely believe that we have not,” she said. “I feel as if I didn’t like to leave it. It was so delightful.” She glanced about her. “The room looks huge,” she said—“almost too huge to live in.”
“Doesn’t it?” he answered. “Now you know how I feel.” He gathered his scraps of paper together with a feeling touch. “I didn’t want to come back myself. When I get a bit of a grouch I shall jerk these out and go back there again.”
“Oh, do let me go with you!” she said. “I have so enjoyed it.”