“No matter, if your conscience is clear; and don’t be so shamefully modest as you always are, but speak up boldly. Now, will you? Promise me you will!”
“I will try, as the good little boy says. But, Isabel, we don’t know these people except from their own account.”
“And that is quite enough.”
“It will be quite enough for the hotel-keeper if they run their board. I shall have to pay it.”
“Now, Basil dear, don’t be disgusting, and go and do as you’re bid.”
It was amusing, but it was perfectly safe, and there was no reason why I should not engage rooms for the ladies at another hotel. I had not the least question of them, and I had failed to worry my wife with a pretended doubt. So I decided that I would go up at once and inquire at the Grand Union. I chose this hotel because, though it lacked the fine flower of the more ancient respectability and the legendary charm of the States, it was so spectacular that it would be in itself a perpetual excitement for those ladies, and would form an effect of society which, with some help from us, might very well deceive them. This was what I said to myself, though in my heart I knew better. Whatever Mrs. Deering might think, that girl was not going to be taken in with any such simple device, and I must count upon the daily chances in the place to afford her the good time she had come for.
As I mounted the steps to the portico of the Grand Union with my head down, and lost in a calculation of these chances, I heard my name gaily called, and I looked up to see young Kendricks, formerly of our staff on Every Other Week, and still a frequent contributor, and a great favourite of my wife’s and my own. My heart gave a great joyful bound at sight of him.
“My dear boy, when in the world did you come?”
“This morning by the steamboat train, and I am never, never going away!”
“You like it, then?”