“She was a mighty sweet woman, and I imagine had lots of influence on Heywood. Well, after her death, he seemed to go to pieces more or less. His daughter, Betty, was away at school, or somewhere, and didn’t know until she came home. You knew her?”
“Oh, yes; very well. I used to see her when they lived here.”
“Yes; I rather fancied, sometimes—”
“I thought a great deal of her and still do,” Allan interrupted.
Mr. Plumfield nodded.
“Well, she came home and tried to brace him up, and I dare say succeeded pretty well for a while—”
He stopped. There was no need that he should say anything more.
Allan, staring at the report before him, remembered how kind Mr. Heywood had been to him years before; remembered his first vision of Betty Heywood, as she came bursting into her father’s office, one day when he was there. He had not seen her for nearly four years—not since the night when she had ridden away on the east-bound flyer to go to school in the East. Had she changed, he wondered, or was she still the same warm-hearted, impulsive girl whom he had known?
The sounder on Allan’s desk began to call him, and he came back to the present with a start. He opened the key and replied with the quick .., .., which told that he was ready to receive the message.