“You will stay, won’t you?” asked Roy.

“With pleasure if you think it will not inconvenience your mother.  That is decidedly important.  You do not know but I may be some moonshiner from the Cumberland, or a bandit from Italy.  My complexion certainly answers to the latter description.  You see, you have only my word for who I really am.”

“I guess that’s good enough,” laughed Roy, “How do you like Rex?”

“Immensely.”

“Everybody does.  I suppose we ought to be very proud of him, and we are, but then we are afraid for him at the same time.  What a boy he is!  See, he’s hunted up our big flag and hung it from Syd’s window in honor of your coming.  You’ll have to make a speech now.”

CHAPTER XII

 An alarming Discovery

Rex come down to the gate to meet them.

“I’m sorry that mother isn’t home,” he said.  “She’s just had a telegram from Syd that takes her to town and will keep her there with him all night Some business connected with the new house,” he added with a glance at Roy.

“But the girls are home and will be delighted to receive you with fitting honors,” he went on.  He did not say that he had had quite a time to induce them to appear at all.  He had rushed into the house in his impetuous way announcing that Roy was coming along with a young man they had met down at the creek who was a famous author and was so nice, and whom they had invited to tea.

“But we don’t know him, Rex,” Eva had exclaimed in considerable dismay.  “You oughtn’t to bring strange people to the house in that way.”

“Oh, but it’s just the same thing as if we did know him,” and Rex went on to explain about the story he had written, which they had all read and admired.

“But is he nice and respectable himself?” Jess inquired.  “You know some of these writers are horribly poor and go about with threadbare clothes.  He might not be the right sort of man for us to know at all.”

“Jess!” Eva exclaimed severely.  “The idea of your thinking that because people are poor they can’t be respectable!  We shall be very glad to meet your friend, Rex,” and Jess felt that she was in such disgrace that when Mr. Keeler was presented she tried to redeem herself by being excessively friendly.

And this was not difficult for her to do.  He was certainly very different from what she had expected.  He had neither long hair like the traditional poet, nor trousers fringed around the bottom like the literary hireling of Grub Street.

Indeed, she found him quite handsome; he dressed almost as well as Rex did, and he was a most interesting talker.  And all the while she was sensible of having seen his face somewhere before.

She thought at first it might have been in a portrait painted as a frontispiece to his book.  At the first opportunity she slipped off to the boys’ room and looked it up.  But there was no portrait there.