Читать книгу The Siege of the Seven Suitors - Meredith Nicholson - Страница 5

"I knew there was something," he was saying, "about Miss Cecilia's younger sister, and I've just recalled it. The girl has a most extraordinary name, quite the most remarkable you ever heard."

He laughed until he was purple in the face. I did not imagine that any name known to feminine nomenclature could be so humorous.

"Hezekiah! Bang! That's the little sister's name. Bassford Hollister had been saving that name for a son, who never appeared, to do honor to old Hezekiah, the perambulator-chap. So they named the girl for her grand-dad. Bang! One of the apostles, Hezekiah!"

I waited for his mirth to wear itself out, and then rose, to terminate the interview with an adequate dramatic dismissal.

"You poor pagan," I remarked, with such irony as I could command; "it's too bad you insist on revealing the abysmal depths of your ignorance: Hezekiah was not an apostle, but a mighty king before the day of apostles."

I left him blinking, and unconvinced as to Hezekiah's proper place in history.

Wiggins, I learned at the office, had, within half an hour, left the club hurriedly in a cab, taking a trunk with him. He had mentioned no mail-address to the clerk.

And this was very unlike Wiggins.