Are you there yet?"
"Yes, but be quick; I'm going right away."
"Would you be so kind as to tell me what time it is?"
The girl blushed again, murmured to herself, "It's right down cruel of
him to ask me!" and then spoke up and answered with admirably
counterfeited unconcern, "Five minutes after eleven."
"Oh, thank you! You have to go, now, have you?"
"I'm sorry."
No reply.
"Miss Ethelton!"
"Well?"
"You you're there yet, ain't you?"
"Yes; but please hurry. What did you want to say?"
"Well, I--well, nothing in particular. It's very lonesome here. It's
asking a great deal, I know, but would you mind talking with me again by
and by--that is, if it will not trouble you too much?"
"I don't know but I'll think about it. I'll try."
"Oh, thanks! Miss Ethelton! . . . Ah, me, she's gone, and here are
the black clouds and the whirling snow and the raging winds come again!
But she said good-by. She didn't say good morning, she said good-by!
. . . The clock was right, after all. What a lightning-winged
two hours it was!"
He sat down, and gazed dreamily into his fire for a while, then heaved a
sigh and said:
"How wonderful it is! Two little hours ago I was a free man, and now my
heart's in San Francisco!"
About that time Rosannah Ethelton, propped in the window-seat of her
bedchamber, book in hand, was gazing vacantly out over the rainy seas
that washed the Golden Gate, and whispering to herself, "How different he
is from poor Burley, with his empty head and his single little antic
talent of mimicry!"
II
Four weeks later Mr.
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