CHAPTER IV.
“Oh!” cried Alice, springing up from the piano-stool. “But, Mary, I have not told you that he was the identical man who lifted me up the other day when I fell in the street.”
“You don’t tell me so!”
“Yes, indeed, the very man; and, strangest of all, he seemed to know something about us, or at least about Lucy and Mr. Whacker.” And she related the strange doings and sayings of the Unknown just previous to the close of his interview with Laura.
“How very provoking,” cried Mary, impatiently, “that I should have been prevented from dining with you girls by the arrival of that stupid old cousin William, as mother will persist in calling him, though, in my opinion, he is about as nearly related to us as the man in the moon! Pshaw!” And she stamped her foot.
“Yes, indeed, I am too sorry. Why, Mary, it would have done”—and her irrepressible eyes began to twinkle—“for a scene in that novel which—”
“Now, Alice—” began Mary, reddening.
“Which I am thinking of writing,” continued Alice, innocently. “Why, what’s the matter?”
“Oh!”
“Is Mary writing a novel?” asked Lucy, with eager interest; for she remembered that she had been always regarded as the genius of the school.