"Andy!" ejaculated Jim, dismay settling on his features. "I've just thought! Do you s'pose I'm paying hotel bills all this time at The Larue?"
Hand grinned unsympathetically. "If you engaged a room, sir, and didn't give it up, I believe it's the custom--"
"That'll do for now, Handy Andy, if you can't get up any better answer than that. Lord, what's that!" Jim suddenly exclaimed, as if he hadn't been waiting, all ears, for that very step in the passage.
"I guess likely that'll be Miss Redmond," replied the respectful Hand. And so it was.
Agatha, fresh as the morning, stood in the doorway for a contemplative moment, before coming forward to take Jim's outstretched hand.
"Samson--shorn!" she exclaimed gaily. "I hardly know you, all fixed up like this."
"Oh, I look much better than this when I'm really dressed up, you know," Jim asserted. Agatha patted his knuckles indulgently, looked at the thinness and whiteness of the hand, and shook her head.
"Not gaining enough yet," she said. "That isn't the right color for a hand."
"Oh, no, it needs more quiet. Fewer visitors, no talking, and plenty of fresh milk and eggs."
Jimmy almost stamped his foot. "Down with eggs!" he cried. "And milk, too. I'm going to institute a mutiny. Excuse me, I know I'm visiting and ought to be polite, but no more invalid's food for me. Handy Andy and I are going out to kill a moose and eat it--eh, Andy?"
But Hand was gone. Agatha sat down in a big rocker at the other window. "In that case," she said demurely, "we'll all have to be thinking of Lynn and New York and work."
Jim shamelessly turned feather. "Oh, no," he cried. "I'm very ill. I'm not able to go to Lynn. Besides, my time isn't up yet. This is my vacation."
He looked up smiling into Agatha's face, ingenuous as a boy of seven.
"Do you always take such--such venturesome holidays?" she asked.
"I never took any before; at least, not what I call holidays," he said. "If you don't come over here and sit near me, I shall get up and go over to you. And Andy says I'm very wobbly on my legs. I might by accident drop into your lap."
Agatha pushed her chair over toward James, and before she could sit down he had drawn it still closer to his own. "The doctor says my hand has to be held!" he assured her, as he got firm hold of hers.