"Yes," she whispered back.
"All right." He took his hat, and set it on the back of his head before
he left her without other salutation.
Then Clementina opened her letter. It was in a woman's hand, and the
writer made haste to explain at the beginning that she was George W.
Hinkle's sister, and that she was writing for him; for though he was now
out of danger, he was still very weak, and they had all been anxious
about him. A month before, he had been hurt in a railroad collision, and
had come home from the West, where the accident happened, suffering
mainly from shock, as his doctor thought; he had taken to his bed at
once, and had not risen from it since. He had been out of his head a
great part of the time, and had been forbidden everything that could
distress or excite him. His sister said that she was writing for him now
as soon as he had seen Clementina's letter; it had been forwarded from
one address to another, and had at last found him there at his home in
Ohio. He wished to say that he would come out for Clementina as soon as
he was allowed to undertake the journey, and in the meantime she must let
him know constantly where she was. The letter closed with a few words of
love in his own handwriting.
Clementina rose from reading it, and put on her hat in a bewildered
impulse to go to him at once; she knew, in spite of all the cautions and
reserves of the letter that he must still be very sick. When she came out
of her daze she found that she could only go to the vice-consul. She put
the letter in his hands to let it explain itself. "You'll undastand,
now," she said. "What shall I do?"
When he had read it, he smiled and answered, "I guess I understood pretty
well before, though I wasn't posted on names. Well, I suppose you'll want
to layout most of your capital on cables, now?"
"Yes," she laughed, and then she suddenly lamented, "Why didn't they
telegraph?"
"Well, I guess he hadn't the head for it," said the vice-consul, "and the
rest wouldn't think of it. They wouldn't, in the country."
Clementina laughed again; in joyous recognition of the fact, "No, my
fatha wouldn't, eitha!"
The vice-consul reached for his hat, and he led the way to Clementina's
gondola at his garden gate, in greater haste than she. At the telegraph
office he framed a dispatch which for expansive fullness and precision
was apparently unexampled in the experience of the clerk who took it and
spelt over its English with them. It asked an answer in the vice-consul's
care, and, "I'll tell you what, Miss Claxon," he said with a husky
weakness in his voice, "I wish you'd let this be my treat."