"Papa," put in Clare suddenly, "your elbow is upsetting the salt."
And as I had to move my seat just then to avoid the glare of the stove, which was falling on my face, we never thought it out.
I was not dining out much at that time, partly because my acquaintance in town was limited, and somewhat too because I cared little for it. But these were pleasant people, the old gentleman witty and amusing, the children, lively girls, nice to look at and good to talk with. The party had too a holiday flavor about them wholesome to recall in Scotland Yard: and as I had thought, playtime over, I should see no more of them, I was proportionately pleased to find that Mr. Guest had not forgotten me, and pleased also--shrewdly expecting that we might kill our fish over again--to regard his invitation to dinner at a quarter to eight as a royal command.
But if I took it so, I was sadly wanting in the regal courtesy to match. What with one delay owing to work that would admit of none, and another caused by a cabman strange to the ways of town, it was twenty-five minutes after the hour named when I reached Bolton Gardens. A stately man, so like the Queen's Counsel that it was plain upon whom the latter modeled himself, ushered me straight into the dining room, where Guest greeted me very kindly, and met my excuses by apologies on his part--for preferring, I suppose, the comfort of eleven people to mine. Then he took me down the table, and said, "My daughter," and Miss Guest shook hands with me and pointed to the chair at her left. I had still, as I unfolded my napkin, to say "Clear, if you please," and then I was free to turn and apologize to her; being a little shy, and, as I have said, a somewhat infrequent diner out.
I think that I never saw so remarkable a likeness--to her younger sister--in my life. She might have been little Bab herself, but for her dress and some striking differences. Miss Guest could not be more than eighteen, in form almost as fairy-like as the little one, with the same child-like, innocent look on her face. She had the big gray eyes, too, that were so charming in Bab; but in her they were more soft and tender and thoughtful, and a thousand times more charming. Her hair too was brown and wavy: only, instead of hanging loose or in a pig-tail, anywhere and anyhow, in a fashion I well remembered, it was coiled in a coronal on the shapely little head, that was so Greek, and in its gracious, stately, old-fashioned pose, so unlike Bab's. Her dress, of some creamy, gauzy stuff, revealed the prettiest white throat in the world, and arms decked in pearls, and, so far, no more recalled my little fishing-mate than the sedate self-possession and assured dignity of this girl, as she talked to her other neighbor, suggested Bab making pancakes and chattering with the landlady's children in her strangely and wonderfully acquired Norse. It was not Bab in fact: and yet it almost might have been: an etherealized, queenly, womanly Bab--who presently turned to me: