Part 18 (1/2)

”You won't see,” said the boy.

”Kindly open the door,” repeated Anna-Rose.

”You won't see,” he said, pulling it open, ”but you can look. If you do see Sacks up there I'm a Hun.”

The minute the door opened, grips fell out. There were two umbrellas, two coats, a knapsack of a disreputable bulged appearance repugnant to American ideas of baggage which run on big simple lines of huge trunks, an _attache_ case, a suit case, a hold-all, a basket and a hat-box.

Outside beside the driver were two such small and modest trunks that they might almost as well have been grips themselves.

”Do you mind taking those in?” asked Anna-Rose, getting out with difficulty over the umbrella that had fallen across the doorway, and pointing to the gutter in which the other umbrella and the knapsack lay and into which the basket, now that her body no longer kept it in, was rolling.

”In where?” crackled the boy.

”In,” said Anna-Rose severely. ”In to wherever Mr. and Mrs. Clouston Sack are.”

”It's no good your saying they are when they ain't,” said the boy, increasing the loudness of his crackling.

”Do you mean they don't live here?” asked Anna-Felicitas, in her turn disentangling herself from that which was still inside the taxi, and immediately followed on to the pavement by the hold-all and the _attache_ case.

”They did live here till yesterday,” said the boy, ”but now they don't.

One does. But that's not the same as two. Which is what I meant when you said they're expecting you and I said they ain't.”

”Do you mean to say--” Anna-Rose stopped with a catch of her breath. ”Do you mean,” she went on in an awe-struck voice, ”that one of them--one of them is dead?”

”Dead? Bless you, no. Anything but dead. The exact opposite. Gone.

Left. Got,” said the boy.

”Oh,” said Anna-Rose greatly relieved, pa.s.sing over his last word, whose meaning escaped her, ”oh--you mean just gone to meet us. And missed us.

You see,” she said, turning to Anna-Felicitas, ”they did try to after all.”

Anna-Felicitas said nothing, but reflected that whichever Sack had tried to must have a quite unusual gift for missing people.

”Gone to meet you?” repeated the boy, as one surprised by a new point of view. ”Well, I don't know about that--”

”We'll go up and explain,” said Anna-Rose. ”Is it Mr. or Mrs. Clouston Sack who is here?”

”Mr.,” said the boy.

”Very well then. Please bring in our things.” And Anna-Rose proceeded, followed by Anna-Felicitas, to walk into the house.

The boy, instead of bringing them in, picked up the articles lying on the pavement and put them back again into the taxi. ”No hurry about them, I guess,” he said to the driver. ”Time enough to take them up when the gurls ask again--” and he darted after the gurls to hand them over to his colleague who worked what he called the elevator.

”Why do you call it the elevator,” inquired Anna-Felicitas, mildly inquisitive, of this boy, who on hearing that they wished to see Mr.

Sack stared at them with profound and unblinking interest all the way up, ”when it is really a lift?”

”Because it is an elevator,” said the boy briefly.

”But we, you see,” said Anna-Felicitas, ”are equally convinced that it's a lift.”