"Yesterday-no. To-day-yes. To-morrow-who
knows. Really, you ought to take some steps to
know your own mind."
" Know my own mind," he retorted in a burst of in-
dignation. "You mean you ought to take steps to
know your own mind."
" My own mind! You-" Then she halted in
acute confusion and all her face went pink. She had
been far quicker than the man to define the scene.
She lowered her head. Let me past, please-"
But Coleman sturdily blocked the way and even
took one of her struggling hands. "Marjory-"
And then his brain must have roared with a thousand
quick sentences for they came tumbling out, one
over the other. * * Her resistance to the grip of his
fingers grew somewhat feeble. Once she raised her
eyes in a quick glance at him. * * Then suddenly
she wilted. She surrendered, she confessed without
words. " Oh, Marjory, thank God, thank God-"
Peter Tounley made a dramatic entrance on the
gallop. He stopped, petrified. "Whoo!" he cried.
"My stars! " He turned and fled. But Coleman
called after him in a low voice, intense with agitation.
" Come back here, you young scoundrel! Come baok
here I "
Peter returned, looking very sheepish. " I hadn't
the slightest idea you-"
" Never mind that now. But look here, if you tell
a single soul-particularly those other young
scoundrels-I'll break-"
" I won't, Coleman. Honest, I won't." He was
far more embarrassed than Coleman and almost equally
so with Marjory. He was like a horse tugging at a
tether. "I won't, Coleman! Honest!"
" Well, all right, then." Peter escaped.
The professor and his wife were in their sitting room
writing letters. The cablegrams had all been answered,
but as the professor intended to prolong his
journey homeward into a month of Paris and London,
there remained the arduous duty of telling their
friends at length exactly what had happened. There
was considerable of the lore of olden Greece in the
professor's descriptions of their escape, and in those
of Mrs. Wainwright there was much about the lack of
hair-pins and soap.
Their heads were lowered over their writing when
the door into the corridor opened and shut quickly,
and upon looking up they saw in the room a radiant
girl, a new Marjory. She dropped to her knees by
her father's chair and reached her arms to his neck.
" Oh, daddy! I'm happy I I'm so happy! "
" Why-what-" began the professor stupidly.
" Oh, I am so happy, daddy!
Of course he could not be long in making his conclusion.
The one who could give such joy to Marjory
was the one who, last night, gave her such grief.
The professor was only a moment in understanding.
He laid his hand tenderly upon her head " Bless my
soul," he murmured. "And so-and so-he-"
At the personal pronoun, Mrs. Wainwright lum-
bered frantically to her feet. " What ? " she shouted.
Coleman ? "
" Yes," answered Marjory. " Coleman." As she
spoke the name her eyes were shot with soft yet
tropic flashes of light.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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