“I dare say,” he said, trying to look easy, “that this is sooner than you expected us!”

Mr. Pierce looked down at the crowd.  Then he smiled, a growing smile that ended in a grin.

“On the contrary,” he said, “I’ve been expecting you for an hour or more.”

The procession began to move gloomily up the steps.  All of them carried hand luggage, and they looked tired and sheepish Miss Cobb stopped in front of Mr. Pierce.

“Do you mean to say,” she demanded furiously, “that you knew the railroad was blocked with snow, and yet you let us go!”

“On the contrary, Miss Cobb,” he said politely, “I remember distinctly regretting that you insisted on going.  Besides, there was the Sherman House.”

Senator Briggs {sic} stopped in front of him.  “Probably you also knew that that was full, including the stables, with people from the stalled trains,” he asserted furiously.

Two by two they went in and through the hall, stamping the snow off, and up to their old rooms again, leaving Slocum, the clerk, staring at them as if he couldn’t believe his eyes.

Mr. Pierce and I watched from the piazza, through the glass.

We saw Doctor Barnes stop and look, and then go and hang over the news stand and laugh himself almost purple, and we saw Mr. Thoburn bringing up the tail of the procession and trying to look unconcerned.  I am not a revengeful woman, but that was one of the happiest moments of my life.

Doctor Barnes turned suddenly, and catching me by the arm, whirled me around and around, singing wildly something about Noah and “the animals went in two by, two, the elephant and the kangaroo.”

He stopped as suddenly as he began and walked me to the door again.

“We’ve got ’em in the ark,” he said, “but I’m thinking this forty days of snow is nearly over, Minnie.  I don’t think much of the dove and the olive-branch, but we’ve got to keep them.”

“It’s against the law,” I quavered.

“Nonsense!” he said.  “We’ve got to make ’em want to stay!”

CHAPTER XXIII

BACK TO NATURE

We gave them a good supper and Mr. Pierce ordered claret served without extra charge.  By eight o’clock they were all in better humor, and when they’d gathered in the lobby Miss Summers gave an imitation of Marie Dressler doing the Salome dance.  Every now and then somebody would look out and say it was still snowing, and with the memory of the drifts and the cold stove in the railroad station behind them, they’d gather closer around the fire and insist that they would go as soon as the road was cleared.

But with the exception of Mr. von Inwald, not one of them really wanted to go.  As Doctor Barnes said over the news stand, each side was bluffing and wouldn’t call the other, and the fellow with the most nerve would win.