“I’m sorry that I cut your holiday short,” I told him.
“It was scarcely a holiday,” he remonstrated.
“What would you call it then?” I asked.
“It was purely a business trip,” he retorted.
There had, I remembered, been a great deal of that business during the past few months. And an ice-cold hand squeezed the last hope of hope out of my heart. She had been at the Coast.
“And this belated visit to your wife and children, I presume, is also for business purposes?” I inquired. But he was able to smile at that, for all my iciness.
“Is it belated?” he asked.
“Wouldn’t you call it that?” I quietly inquired.
“But I had to clear up that case of the stolen horses,” he protested, “that Sing Lo thievery.”
“Which naturally comes before one’s family,” I ironically reminded him.