"
"Then you think that a bill"--began the Mayor, eagerly.
"I think, my dear sir," said Paul plaintively, "that I and my
friends have already tried the patience of these two young ladies
quite enough yesterday with politics and law-making. I have to
catch the six-o'clock train to San Francisco this evening, and have
already lost the time I hoped to spend with Miss Yerba by missing
her at the convent. Let me stroll on here, if you like, and if I
venture to monopolize the attention of this young lady for half an
hour, you, my dear Mr. Mayor, who have more frequent access to her,
I know, will not begrudge it to me."
He placed himself beside Yerba and Milly, and began an
entertaining, although, I fear, slightly exaggerated, account of
his reception by the Lady Superior, and her evident doubts of his
identity with the trustee mentioned in Pendleton's letter of
introduction. "I confess she frightened me," he continued, "when
she remarked that, according to my statement, I could have been
only eighteen years old when I became your guardian, and as much in
want of one as you were. I think that only her belief that Mr.
Woods and the Mayor would detect me as an impostor provoked her at
last to tell me your whereabouts.
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