The Girl From His Town
Page 21
CHAPTER XXI--RUGGLES RETURNS
Dan did not fall asleep until morning, and then he dreamed of Blairtownand the church and a summer evening and something like the drone of theflies on the window-pane soothed him, and came into his waking thoughts,for at noon he was violently shaken by the shoulder and a man's voicecalled him as he opened his eyes and looked into Ruggles' face.
"Gee Whittaker!" Ruggles exclaimed. "You _are_ one of the sevensleepers! I've been here something like seventeen minutes, whistling andmaking all kinds of barnyard noises."
As Dan welcomed him, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, Ruggles told himthat he had come over "the pond" just for the wedding.
"There isn't going to be any wedding, Josh! Got out of all that lastnight."
Ruggles had the breakfast card in his hand, which the waiter had broughtin, and Dan, taking it from his friend, ordered a big breakfast.
"I'm as hungry as the dickens, Rug, and I guess you are, too."
"What was the matter with the duchess?" Ruggles asked. "Were you tooyoung for her, or not rich enough?"
Significantly the boy answered: "One too many, Josh," and Ruggles wincedat the response.
"Here are the fellows with my trunks and things," he announced as theporters came in with his luggage. "Just drop them there, boys; they'regoing to fix some kind of a room later."
Blair's long silk-lined coat lay on a chair where he had flung it, hishat beside it, and Ruggles went over to the corner and lifted up afragrant glove. It was one of Letty Lane's gloves which Dan had found inthe motor and taken possession of. The young man had gone to hisdressing-room and begun running his bath, and Ruggles, laying the gloveon the table, said to himself:
"I knew he would get rid of the duchess, all right."
But when Dan came back into the room later in his dressing-gown forbreakfast, Ruggles said:
"You'll have to send her back her glove, Dannie."
At the sight of it beside the breakfast tray, Dan blushed scarlet. Hepicked up the fragrant object.
"That's all right; I'll take care of it."
"Is _Mandalay_ running the same as ever?" Ruggles asked over his baconand eggs.
"Same as ever."
Ruggles saw he had not returned in vain, and that he was destined totake up his part of the business just as he had laid it out for himselfto Lord Galorey. "It's up to me now: I'll have to take care of theactress, and I'm darned if I haven't got a job. If Dan colors up likethat at the sight of her glove, I wonder what he does when he holds herhand!"