"Oh!" Clementina moaned.
"Do you want them back?" he demanded. "I will go in for them!"
"No, no! No. But it seemed such a—waste!"
"Yes, that is a sin, too." They climbed silently to the hotel. At Mrs. Atwell's door, he spoke. "Try to forget what I said, and forgive me, if you can."
"Yes—yes, I will, Mr. Gregory. You mustn't think of it any moa."
XII.
Clementina did not sleep till well toward morning, and she was still sleeping when Mrs. Atwell knocked and called in to her that her brother Jim wanted to see her. She hurried down, and in the confusion of mind left over from the night before she cooed sweetly at Jim as if he had been Mr. Gregory, "What is it, Jim? What do you want me for?"
The boy answered with the disgust a sister's company manners always rouse in a brother. "Motha wants you. Says she's wo'ked down, and she wants you to come and help." Then he went his way.
Mrs. Atwell was used to having help snatched from her by their families at a moment's notice. "I presume you've got to go, Clem," she said.
"Oh, yes, I've got to go," Clementina assented, with a note of relief which mystified Mrs. Atwell.