At half-past
twelve, with a rush and a flutter, the two young falcons sailed into
the main hallway and effusively bade adieu to their limp cavaliers,
who slunk away, in different directions, when they observed the
disgruntled parent and the heartily amused Briton.
"So they brought you home safely?" calmly remarked Hawke, as he
watched the happy father gathering his chickens unto his wing.
"We brought them home safe," cutely remarked Miss Phenie. "Those
fellows are heavenly dancers, but they are not worth shucks in a
boat. I wish we had had you out with us. I like Englishmen!" with
which frank declaration Miss Phenie and Miss Genie whisked themselves
away to bed, Miss Genie leaning over the banister to jovially cry
out:
"Don't you go away till we fix up that Chillon trip." Major Hawke
and Phineas Forbes, Esq., drank a last libation to the friendly
god Neptune, the old man huskily remarking:
"Say, Major, those are two fine girls, and they will have a million
apiece. I want 'em to be sensible and marry Chicago men, but, they
both go in for coronets and all that humbug." The laughing Major
extricated himself from the social tentacles of the honest old boy,
mentally deciding to play off Miss Genie against Mad-ame Berthe
Louison.
"I will give these strange girls 'a day out.' It may reduce the
nez retrousseeoi my mysterious employer." And so he dreamed that
night that he was an assistant presiding genius of the great pig
Golgotha, where Phineas Forbes was the monarch of the meat ax.
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