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But the lists could not detain Tom two hours, Crailey knew, and it was two hours since the new volunteers had sung "The Star Spangled Banner" over the last of the punch, and had left the club to Tom and the two old men. Only once or twice in that time had Crailey shifted his position, or altered the direction of his set gaze at nothing.
After this ceremonial he dragged a chair to the window, tilted back in it with his feet on the low sill, his back to the thin light and his friend, and said in a slow, gentle tone: "Well, Crailey?" "I suppose you mean that I ought to offer my explanation first," said the other, still standing. "Well, there isn't any."
A moment later, Tom heard Crailey come down the stairs, sure of foot and humming lightly to himself. The door of the office was closed; Crailey did not look in, but presently appeared, smiling, trim, immaculate, all in white linen, on the opposite side of the street, and offered badinage to the boy who toiled at the shutters.
"Don't have to seek far, sometimes, General," murmured Crailey, from the depths of the best chair in the club, whereupon Trumble, not trusting himself to answer, went out to the street. Miss Carewe was at her desk, writing to Sister Cecilia, whom she most loved of all the world, when the bells startled her with their sudden clangor.
He set about this task, and, concluding that there was no necessity to wear his uniform on the steamboat, decided to place it in the trunk, and went to the bed where he had folded and left it. It was not there. Nor did a thorough search reveal it anywhere in the room. Yet no one could have stolen it, for when he had gone down to the office Crailey had remained on this floor.
His only hope, he declared, was in Crailey Gray's promise to invent for him: a concave partner. There was a thin, quizzing shank of a son, Jefferson, who lived upon quinine, ague and deviltry; and there were the two daughters, Fanchon and Virginia.
Even Fanchon Bareaud comprehended languidly, though she was more blurred than ever, and her far-away eyes belied the mechanical vivacity of her manner, for Crailey was thirty miles down the river, with a fishing-rod neatly packed in a leather case. Mr.
It was because his chance of saving the property of a man he despised was being endangered. Crailey stretched forth a hand and touched his friend's knee. "Your side of the conversation is a trifle loud, Tom," he said. "Miss Carewe is down there, across the street, on a pile of boxes."
Tanberry, who would have detained her for there was in her face and manner the incipient wildness of control overstrained to the breaking-point she went hurriedly out of the room and out of the house, to the old bench in the garden. There she sank down, her face hidden in her arms; there on the spot where she had first seen Crailey Gray.
She rose unsteadily to her feet and pushed back the hair from her forehead, shivering convulsively as she looked down at the motionless figure on the sofa. "Crailey!" said Tom, in the same angry, shaking voice. "Crailey, you've got to rouse yourself! This won't do; you've got to be a man! Crailey!" He was trying to force the brandy through the tightly clenched teeth. "Crailey!"
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