"Look here, old chap! I can't comfort them for your not being there. You know that, of course. But it always helps women to have a man coming and going in the house—to take a lot of things off their hands—and keep them company—and I'll do that. If I can't be everything that you'd be—"
"You can be more than I could ever be."
"Yes—from the point of view of having a little more money—and freedom—and a car to take them out in—and all that; but if you think I could ever make up to them for you, old sport—but that isn't what you want me to do, is it? You don't want me to be you, but to be something different—only, something that'll make your mother and Jennie and your little sisters buck up again—"
Stumbling to his feet, Teddy drew the back of his hand across his eyes.
"I—I guess I'd better beat it," he muttered, unsteadily. "They—they don't like you to stay out too long."
But Bob forced him gently back into his chair again.
"Oh, cheese that, Teddy! Sit down and let's get better acquainted. I want to tell you how Jennie and I made up our minds to get married."
[CHAPTER XXIV]
"And yet it's one of the commonest types of the criminal mind," Stenhouse was explaining to Bob during the following forenoon. "Fellows perfectly normal in every respect but that of their own special brand of crime. See no harm in that whatever. Won't have a cigar?"
Having declined the cigar for the third time, Bob found a subconscious fascination in watching the lawyer's Havana travel from one corner to the other of his long, mobile, thin-lipped mouth. It was interesting, too, to get a view of Teddy's case different from Jennie's.