“By Jove! I never thought of that! It seems likely enough, too. What do you think, that she was stolen?”
“No,” said Houston slowly, “that does not seem so probable as that she may have been some child that they were hired to take.”
“In that case,” said Rutherford, “I should think the uncertainty regarding her family and origin, would be almost as bad as the certainty in the other case.”
“It might seem so to some people,” Houston replied, adding with a smile, “especially to a Bostonian, who prided himself upon his ‘blue blood’.”
“Oh,” said Rutherford, coloring, “I’m not pursuing this inquiry on my own account at all, I was only thinking of her prospects generally. I’m not interested in that direction.”
“In what direction are you interested, if I may ask?” said Houston, experiencing, for the first time, a little twinge of jealousy.
“In the direction of the ‘Hub,’ my dear boy,” Rutherford replied, with another blush.
“Spoken like a true Bostonian!” said Houston approvingly.
“Yes, sir,” continued Rutherford, “there’s a little girl belongs back there in Boston, that’s more to me than all the ladies you can produce in this part of the country, or any other, no matter how beautiful they may be; and she’s not bad looking either. Her parents took her to Europe for a little trip this spring, and Boston seemed so lonesome, that was the reason I came west.”
“Good for you, Ned, you have my best wishes,” said Houston, shaking hands with his friend, “but really, you and Lyle had seemed so fond of each other’s society lately, that I thought perhaps it was to be your destiny to rescue her from her unhappy fate.”