“I know it,” he vaguely conceded. “But I didn't expect to get in.”
“Well, now you're here, we may as well talk. You must tell your family at once.”
“Yes; I'm going to write to them as soon as I get back to my room. I couldn't last night.”
“But you mustn't write; you must go—and prepare their minds.”
“Go?” he echoed. “Oh, that isn't necessary! My father knew about it from the beginning, and I guess they've all talked it over. Their minds are prepared.” The sense of his immeasurable superiority to any one's opposition began to dissipate Dan's unnatural awe; at the pleading face which Alice put on, resting one cheek against the back of one of her clasped hands, and leaning on the table with her elbows, he began to be teased by that silken rope round her waist.
“But you don't understand, dear,” she said; and she said “dear” as if they were old married people. “You must go to see them, and tell them; and then some of them must come to see me—your father and sisters.”
“Why, of course.” His eye now became fastened to one of the fluffy silken balls.
“And then mamma and I must go to see your mother, mustn't we?”
“It'll be very nice of you—yes. You know she can't come to you.”
“Yes, that's what I thought, and—What are you looking at?” she drew herself back from the table and followed the direction of his eye with a woman's instinctive apprehension of disarray.