Page:The Reverberator (2nd edition, American issue, London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1888).djvu/139

Rh man said he would go round if Mr. Flack would accompany him. "All right!" said Mr. Flack, and this conception became a reality, with the accidental abatement that the objects of the demonstration were absent. "Suppose they get in?" Delia had said lugubriously to her sister.

"Well, what if they do?" Francie asked.

"Why, the count and the marquis won't be interested in Mr. Flack."

"Well then, perhaps he will be interested in them. He can write something about them. They will like that."

"Do you think they would?" Delia demanded, in solemn dubiousness.

"Why, yes, if he should say fine things."

"They do like fine things," said Delia. "They get off so many themselves. Only the way Mr. Flack does it—it's a different style."

"Well, people like to be praised in any style."

"That's so," Delia rejoined, musingly.

One afternoon, coming in about three o'clock, Mr. Flack found Francie alone. She had expressed a wish, after luncheon, for a couple of hours of independence: she intended to write to Gaston, and having accidentally missed a post promised herself that her letter should be of double its usual length. Her companions respected her desire for solicitude, Mr. Dosson taking himself off to his daily session in the reading-room of the American bank and Delia (the girls had