“That’s an active little girl,” said Rufus, looking after her as she ran to the friendly shelter of the bedroom. “Reminds me of one of our girls at Coolspring—she does. Well, now, and who may Sally be?”
Amelius answered the question, as usual, without the slightest reserve. Rufus waited in impenetrable silence until he had completed his narrative—then took him gently by the arm, and led him to the window. With his hands in his pockets and his long legs planted wide apart on his big feet, the American carefully studied the face of his young friend under the strongest light that could fall on it.
“No,” said Rufus, speaking quietly to himself, “the boy is not raving mad, so far as I can see. He has every appearance on him of meaning what he says. And this is what comes of the Community of Tadmor, is it? Well, civil and religious liberty is dearly purchased sometimes in the United States—and that’s a fact.”
Amelius turned away to pack his portmanteau. “I don’t understand you,” he said.
“I don’t suppose you do,” Rufus remarked. “I am at a similar loss myself to understand you. My store of sensible remarks is copious on most occasions—but I’m darned if I ain’t dried up in the face of this! Might I venture to ask what that venerable Chief Christian at Tadmor would say to the predicament in which I find my young Socialist this morning?”
“What would he say?” Amelius repeated. “Just what he said when Mellicent first came among us. ‘Ah, dear me! Another of the Fallen Leaves!’ I wish I had the dear old man here to help me. He would know how to restore that poor starved, outraged, beaten creature to the happy place on God’s earth which God intended her to fill!”
Rufus abruptly took him by the hand. “You mean that?” he said.
“What else could I mean?” Amelius rejoined sharply.
“Bring her right away to breakfast at the hotel!” cried Rufus, with every appearance of feeling infinitely relieved. “I don’t say I can supply you with the venerable Chief Christian—but I can find a woman to fix you, who is as nigh to being an angel, barring the wings, as any she-creature since the time of mother Eve.” He knocked at the bedroom door, turning a deaf ear to every appeal for further information which Amelius could address to him. “Breakfast is waiting, miss!” he called out; “and I’m bound to tell you that the temper of the cook at our hotel is a long way on the wrong side of uncertain. Well, Amelius, this is the age of exhibition. If there’s ever an exhibition of ignorance in the business of packing a portmanteau, you run for the Gold Medal—and a unanimous jury will vote it, I reckon, to a young man from Tadmor. Clear out, will you, and leave it to me.”
He pulled off his coat, and conquered the difficulties of packing in a hurry, as if he had done nothing else all his life. The landlady herself, appearing with pitiless punctuality exactly at the expiration of the hour, “smoothed her horrid front” in the polite and placable presence of Rufus. He insisted on shaking hands with her; he took pleasure in making her acquaintance; she reminded him, he did assure her, of the lady of the captain-general of the Coolspring Branch of the St. Vitus Commandery; and he would take the liberty to inquire whether they were related or not. Under cover of this fashionable conversation, Simple Sally was taken out of the room by Amelius without attracting notice. She insisted on carrying her threadbare old clothes away with her in the box which had contained the new dress. “I want to look at them sometimes,” she said, “and think how much better off I am now.” Rufus was the last to take his departure; he persisted in talking to the landlady all the way down the stairs and out to the street door.