"I told him I would take the responsibility." He seemed very capable of taking it, both the ladies must have thought, with his quick orders about the luggage and his waiting cab.

Mrs Kilbannon said so.

"I'm sure," she told him, "we are better off with you than with Hugh.

He was always a daft dependence at a railway station." They both--Mrs Kilbannon and Dr Drummond--looked out of the corners of their eyes, so to speak, at Christie, the only one who might be expected to show any sensitiveness; but Miss Cameron accepted the explanation with readiness.

Indeed, she said, she would have been real vexed if Mr Finlay had stayed behind on her account--she showed herself well aware of the importance of a nomination, and the desirability of responding to it.
"It will just give me an opportunity of seeing the town," she said, looking at it through the cab windows as they drove; and Dr Drummond had to admit that she seemed a sensible creature.