“Why, he's pale!” cried Minnie. “Eunice!”
“Oh, it's just the heat in here.” Dan really felt a little sick and faint with it, but he was not sorry to seem affected by the day's strain upon his nerves.
The girls began to take off their wraps. “Don't. I'll go with you. Boardman's out there.”
“Boardman! What nonsense!” exclaimed Eunice.
“He'll like to hear your opinion of it,” Dan began; but his sister pulled the doors open, and ran out to see if he really meant that too.
Whether Boardman had heard her, or had discreetly withdrawn out of earshot at the first sound of voices, she could not tell, but she found him some distance away from the snow-box on the piazza. “Dan's just managed to tell us you were here,” she said, giving him her hand. “I'm glad to see you. Do come in.”
“Come along as a sort of Job's comforter,” Boardman explained, as he followed her in; and he had the silly look that the man who feels himself superfluous must wear.
“Then you know about it?” said Eunice, while Minnie Mavering and he were shaking hands.
“Yes, Boardman knows; he can tell you about it,” said Dan, from the hall chair he had dropped into. He rose and made his way to the stairs, with the effect of leaving the whole thing to them.
His sisters ran after him, and got him upstairs and into his room, with Boardman's semi-satirical connivance, and Eunice put up the window, while Minnie went to get some cologne to wet his forehead. Their efforts were so successful that he revived sufficiently to drive them out of his room, and make them go and show Boardman to his.