“One thing we must do, though,” said Chalks, “we must get her out of this so-called hotel. Blamed if I can guess how she ever came here.”
This was before we had found the guidebook in her room, long before we had heard her simple story, which explained everything.
“We’ve acted like a pack of hounds, that’s my opinion,” Chalks went on. “And now we’ve got to step up to the captain’s office and settle.”
His rhetoric was confused, but I dare say we caught the idea.
“We’ve been acting like a pack of poodles latterly,” somebody put in, “following her about, fawning at her feet, fetching and carrying for her.”
“Well, and hadn’t we oughter?” demanded Chalks. “Is there any gentleman here who doesn’t like it?”
“Oh, no, I only mentioned the circumstance as a source of unction,” said the speaker.
“Chalks is right. We must get her out of the hotel,” Campbell agreed. “She mustn’t be exposed any longer to contact with those little beasts of Mimis.”
“That’s all very well, but how are we to manage it?” inquired Norton. “We can’t give her the word to move, without saying why. And as I understand it, that’s precisely the last thing we wish to do.”
“We want to get her out of the mud, without letting her know she’s in it,” said another.
“Yes, that’s the devil of it,” admitted Chalks. “But I’ll tell you what,” he added, with an air of inspiration. “Why not work it from the other end round? Get rid of the Mimis, and let Miss stop?”
This proposition was so radical, so revolutionary, we were inclined to greet it with derision. But Chalks stood by his guns. “How to do it?” he cried. “Why, boycott ‘em. Make this shop too hot to hold ‘em. Cultivate the art of being infernally disagreeable. They’ll clear out fast enough. Then there’d be no harm in Miss staying till the end of time.”
“Oh, we can fill their places up with fellows. I’ll go touting among the men at the school. Easy enough to bag a half a dozen.”
“But what about Lucile?”—Lucile, it will be remembered, was Madame’s niece.
“That’s so,” confessed Chalks, dashed for a moment. “Lucile’s the snag. But I guess on the whole Lucile will have to go too. I’ll hire a man I know to want her room. Madame won’t let family feeling stand in the way of trade. Especially the sky-pilot won’t, not he. And I’d like to know who’s the boss of this shebang, if not Monsieur the Abbé? There’s no love lying around loose between him and Lucile, as it stands. Just let a man turn up and ask for her room, Madame’ll drop her like a hot potato.”