"Oh, brother Cal!" remarked the hostess as she softly dropped her
eyelids and smiled reprovingly; "this irreverence comes of visiting Miss
Agnes Wilt too often. I must take you in charge."
Duff Salter gave a furious sneeze:
"Jericho! Oh! oh! Jericho!"
Calvin Van de Lear closed the door between the dining-room and the
parlor, and drew Duff Salter's tablets from his pocket and wrote:
"I want you to go up on the house roof with me."
Duff looked at him in surprise, and wrote in reply:
"Do you mean to throw me off?"
Calvin's sallow complexion reddened a very little as he laughed
flippantly, and stroked his dry side-whiskers and took the tablets
again:
"I want you to see the ghost's walk," he wrote. "Come along!"
* * * * *
Passing the sick father's door, Calvin led Duff Salter up to the garret
floor, where a room with rag carpet, dumb-bells, boxing-gloves,
theological books, and some pictures far from modest, disclosed the
varied tastes of an entailed pulpit's expectant. Calvin drew down the
curtain of the one window and lighted a lamp. There was a table in the
middle of the floor, and there the two men conducted a silent
conversation on the ivory tablets.
"This is my room," wrote Calvin.
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