"Make you acquainted with Mr. Perkins," he said, neglecting to
mention the name of the first party of the introduction.
Perkins, goggling upward to meet a coldly hostile glance, rose,
nodded in some wonder, and said: "How do you do?" Raimonda sent
Cluff a glance of interrogation, to which that experimentalist in
human antagonisms responded with a borrowed Spanish gesture of
pleasurable uncertainty.
"I will not say that I'm glad to meet you, Mr. Perkins," began
Carroll weightily, and paused.
If he expected a query, he was doomed to a disappointment. Such of
the Perkins features as were not concealed by his extraordinary
glasses expressed an immovable calm.
"Doubtless you know to what I refer."
Still those blank brown glasses regarded him in silence.
"Do you or do you not?" demanded Carroll, struggling to keep his
temper in the face of this exasperating irresponsiveness.
"Haven't the least idea," replied Perkins equably.
"You were on the tram this morning when Miss Brewster was
insulted, weren't you?"
"Yes."
"And ran away?"
"I did."
"What did you run away for?"
"I ran away," the other sweetly informed him, "on important
business of my own.
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