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Crane, Stephen, 1871-1900

"Active Service"

"Marjory-"
And then his brain must have roared with a thousand
quick sentences for they came tumbling out, one
over the other. * * Her resistance to the grip of his
fingers grew somewhat feeble. Once she raised her
eyes in a quick glance at him. * * Then suddenly
she wilted. She surrendered, she confessed without
words. " Oh, Marjory, thank God, thank God-"
Peter Tounley made a dramatic entrance on the
gallop. He stopped, petrified. "Whoo!" he cried.
"My stars! " He turned and fled. But Coleman
called after him in a low voice, intense with agitation.
" Come back here, you young scoundrel! Come baok
here I "
Peter returned, looking very sheepish. " I hadn't
the slightest idea you-"
" Never mind that now. But look here, if you tell
a single soul-particularly those other young
scoundrels-I'll break-"
" I won't, Coleman. Honest, I won't." He was
far more embarrassed than Coleman and almost equally
so with Marjory. He was like a horse tugging at a
tether. "I won't, Coleman! Honest!"
" Well, all right, then." Peter escaped.
The professor and his wife were in their sitting room
writing letters. The cablegrams had all been answered,
but as the professor intended to prolong his
journey homeward into a month of Paris and London,
there remained the arduous duty of telling their
friends at length exactly what had happened. There
was considerable of the lore of olden Greece in the
professor's descriptions of their escape, and in those
of Mrs.


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