There was a mingling of sense and seriousness in her raillery, which he recognized, and he said, with a half-vexed laugh at himself: “Well, really, Miss Ludolph, I suppose that I have not wholly regained my wits since the fire. I throw myself on your mercy.” (The same expression he had used once before. She remembered it, and her face changed instantly.) Turning hastily away to hide her feelings, she said, in a rather husky voice, “When I was a wicked fool, I told you I had none; but I think I am a little changed now.” Then she added, sharply, “Please don’t stand there keeping our friends waiting;” and she led the way into the lecture-room, now filled with tables and hungry people.
Dennis was in a maze, and could scarcely understand her, she was so different from the pensive lady, shrinking from rude contact with the world, that he had expected to meet. He did not realize that there was not a particle of weak sentimentality about her, and that, since now pride was gone, her energetic spirit would make her as truly a leader in scenes like these as in those with which she had been familiar. Much less could he understand that she was hiding a heart brimming over with love to him.
He followed her, however, with much assumed humility. When in the middle of the room, who should meet him squarely but Bill Cronk?
“Hello!” he roared, giving Dennis a slap on his back that startled even the hungry, apathetic people at the tables.
Dennis was now almost desperate. Glad as he was to see Cronk, he felt that he was gathering around him a company as incongruous as was the supper he had brought home. If Yahcob Bunk or even the red-nosed bartender had appeared, to claim him as brother, he would scarcely have been surprised. He naturally thought that the Baroness Ludolph might hesitate before entering such a circle of intimates. But he was not guilty of the meanness of cutting a humble friend, even though he saw the eyes of Christine resting on him. In his embarrassment, however, he held out the washbasin in his confused effort to shake hands, and said, heartily, “Why, Cronk, I am glad you came safely out of it.”
“Is this gentleman a friend of yours?” asked Christine, with inimitable grace.
“Yes!” said Dennis, firmly, though coloring somewhat. “He once rendered me a great kindness—”
“Well, miss, you bet your money on the right hoss that time,” interrupted Bill. “If I hain’t a friend of his’n, I’d like to know where you’ll find one; though I did kick up like a cussed ole mule when he knocked the bottle out of my hand. Like enough if he hadn’t I wouldn’t be here.”
“Won’t you present me, Mr. Fleet?” said Christine, with an amused twinkle in her eye.
“Mr. Cronk,” said Dennis (who had now reached that state of mind when one becomes reckless), “this lady is Miss Ludolph, and, I hope I may venture to add, another friend of mine.”
She at once put out her hand, that seemed like a snowflake in the great horny paw of the drover, and said, “Indeed, Mr. Cronk, I will permit no one to claim stronger friendship to Mr. Fleet than mine.”
“I can take any friend of Mr. Fleet’s to my buzzom at once,” said Bill, speaking figuratively, but Christine instinctively shrank nearer Dennis. In talking with men, Bill used the offhand vernacular of his calling, but when addressing ladies, he evidently thought that a certain style of metaphor bordering on sentiment was the proper thing. But Christine said, “As a friend of Mr. Fleet’s you shall join our party at once;” and she led them to the further end of the room, where at a table sat Dr. Arten, Professor and Mrs. Leonard, Ernst, and the little Bruders, who at the prospect of more eating were wide awake again. After the most hearty greetings they were seated, and she took her place by the side of the little children in order to wait on them. Few more remarkable groups sat down together, even in that time of chaos and deprivation. Professor Leonard was without vest or collar, and sat with coat buttoned tight up to his chin to hide the defect. He had lost his scholarly gold-rimmed spectacles; and a wonderful pair of goggles bestrode his nose in their place. Mrs. Leonard was lost in the folds of an old delaine dress that was a mile too large, and her face looked as if she had assisted actively in an Irish wake. Dr. Arten did the honors at the head of the table in his dress coat and vest that had once been white, though he no longer figured around in red flannel drawers as he had done on the beach. The little round faces of the Bruders seemed as if protruding from animated rag babies, while nothing could dim the glory of Ernst’s great spiritual eyes, as they gratefully and wistfully followed Dennis’s every movement. Cronk was in a very dilapidated and famished state, and endured many and varied tortures in his efforts to be polite while he bolted sandwiches at a rate that threatened famine. Christine still wore the woollen dress she had so hastily donned with Dennis’s assistance on Sunday night, and the marks of the fire were all over it. Around her neck the sparks had burned a hole here and there, through which her white shoulders gleamed. While she was self-possessed and assiduous in her attention to the little children, there was a glow of excitement in her eyes which perhaps Mrs. Leonard understood better than anyone else, though the shrewd old doctor was anything but blind.
Dennis sat next to Christine in shirtsleeves once white, but now, through dust and smoke, of as many colors as Joseph’s coat. He was too weary to eat much,
