ed to be--they were giving it to her. A general hubbub rose from the
floor and the galleries of the hall--the sound of several thousand
people stamping with their feet and rapping with their umbrellas and
sticks. Ransom felt faint, and for a little while he stood with his gaze
interlocked with that of the policeman. Then suddenly a wave of coolness
seemed to break over him, and he exclaimed: "My dear fellow, that isn't
applause--it's impatience. It isn't a reception, it's a call!"

The policeman neither assented to this proposition nor denied it; he
only transferred the protuberance in his cheek to the other side, and
observed:

"I guess she's sick."

"Oh, I hope not!" said Ransom, very gently. The stamping and rapping
swelled and swelled for a minute, and then it subsided; but before it
had done so Ransom's definition of it had plainly become the true one.
The tone of the manifestation was good-humoured, but it was not
gratulatory. He looked at his watch again, and saw that five minutes
more had elapsed, and he remembered what the newspaperman in Charles
Street had said about Olive's guaranteeing Verena's punctuality. Oddly
enough, at the moment the image of this gentleman recurred to him, the
gentleman himself burst through the other door, in a state of the
liveliest agitation.

"Why in the name of goodness don't she go on? If she wants to make them
call her, they've done it about enough!" Mr. Pardon turned, pressingly,
from Ransom to the policeman and back again, and in his preoccupation
gave no sign of having met the Mississippian before.

"I guess she's sick," said the policeman.

"The public'll be sick!" cried the distressed reporter. "If she's sick,
why doesn't she send for a doctor? All Boston is packed into this house,
and she has got to talk to it. I want to go in and see."

"You can't go in," said the policeman drily.

"Why can't I go in, I should like to know? I want to go in for the
_Vesper_"!

"You can't go in for anything. I'm keeping this man out, too," the
policeman added genially, as if to make Mr. Pardon's exclusion appear
less invidious.

"Why, they'd ought to let _you_ in," said Matthias, staring a moment at
Ransom.

"May be they'd ought, but they won't," the policeman remarked.

"Gracious me!" panted Mr. Pardon; "I knew from the first Miss Chancellor
would make a mess of it! Where's Mr. Filer?" he went on eagerly,
addressing himself apparently to either of the others, or to both.