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Updated: August 8, 2024
Some, indeed, proposed returning at once to Stonegate, but they were overruled by the younger members of the party, who were anxious to remain until the moon had risen, and also by Mrs. Woburn's desire not to curtail their enjoyment; and it was finally settled that the steamer should not return until ten o'clock.
The night-clerk, roused by the swinging of the door, sat watching Woburn's approach with the unexpectant eye of one who has full confidence in his capacity for digesting surprises.
You'd never do a mean action, but you'd be sorry for people who did; I can see it in your face; that's why I trusted you right off." Woburn's eyes were fixed on the window; he hardly seemed to hear her. At length he walked across the room and pulled up the shade. The electric lights were dissolving in the gray alembic of the dawn.
He pushed open the swinging door and found himself in a long corridor with a tessellated floor, at the end of which, in a brightly-lit enclosure of plate-glass and mahogany, the night-clerk dozed over a copy of the Police Gazette. The air in the corridor was rich in reminiscences of yesterday's dinners, and a bronzed radiator poured a wave of dry heat into Woburn's face.
Instead of which the best that he could hope for in "shorter notices" would be an announcement that "Mr. Woburn's many admirers will no doubt find his last book eminently to their taste. He provides a lavish supply of the features they are accustomed to look for in his work." Poor Delancey, his stories did sell so well!
It was pitiful to see the little canvas bag, with his name printed across it, lying placid and empty upon the shelf at Woburn's store, while all the other bags were increasing daily, and some had assumed quite a portly rotundity of form, for the weeks were slipping by, and it was almost time for the gold-train to start off for Ballarat.
"Ye fool!" growled another, "hain't we got a man as is worth any three parsons, and can splash texts around like clay out o' a cradle. What more d'ye want?" "We hain't got no church!" urged the same dissentient. "Have it in the open air," one suggested. "Or in Woburn's store," said another. "Or in Adams' saloon."
A dry blast had come out of the north, with pledge of frost before daylight, and to Woburn's shivering fancy the pools in the pavement seemed already stiffening into ice. He turned up his coat-collar and stepped out rapidly, his hands deep in his coat-pockets.
Not that there was anything surprising in Woburn's appearance; but the night-clerk's callers were given to such imaginative flights in explaining their luggageless arrival in the small hours of the morning, that he fared habitually on fictions which would have staggered a less experienced stomach.
"There is not much fear that any one who has seen your mother would not recognise her daughter," was Mrs. Woburn's smiling reply. "Do you think me so much like her?" asked Ruth eagerly, looking greatly pleased. "Indeed I do. But this is our lodging. I see Julia looking out of the window."
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