“Well,” said Claxon, “you must make Miss Hinkle, he'a, stand it if it ain't. She's got me to go to it.”
Mr. Orson apparently could not enter into the joke; but he accompanied the party, which again began to forget him, across the ferry and up the elevated road to the street car that formed the last stage of their progress to the hotel. At this point George's sister fell silent, and Clementina's father burst out, “Look he'a! I guess we betta not keep this up any longa; I don't believe much in supprises, and I guess she betta know it now!”
He looked at George's sister as if for authority to speak further, and Clementina looked at her, too, while George's father nervously moistened his smiling lips with the tip of his tongue, and let his twinkling eyes rest upon Clementina's face.
“Is he at the hotel?” she asked.
“Yes,” said his sister, monosyllabic for once.
“I knew it,” said Clementina, and she was only half aware of the fullness with which his sister now explained how he wanted to come so much that the doctor thought he had better, but that they had made him promise he would not try to meet her at the steamer, lest it should be too great a trial of his strength.
“Yes,” Clementina assented, when the story came to an end and was beginning over again.
She had an inexplicable moment when she stood before her lover in the room where they left her to meet him alone. She faltered and he waited constrained by her constraint.
“Is it all a mistake, Clementina?” he asked, with a piteous smile.
“No, no!”