“I thought so, too,” answered Allan, smiling. “But I guess it was just girls in general—you know she was about the only one I ever met. I’m mighty glad she’s going to be happy. I’m going to the wedding. Why, where’s Mamie?” he added, looking around at the sound of a softly closed door. “She not going to bed already?”
“Already!” echoed Mrs. Welsh. “Do you know it’s after eleven o’clock? Time everyone of us was a-bed. Come, now, off wid ye!”
Allan laughed and arose, stretching himself lazily.
“I hadn’t any idea it was so late,” he said. “Good-night,” and he mounted to his room.
He went immediately to bed—but not to sleep. The events of the day had been many and interesting. He closed his eyes, and called up again the minutes he had passed with Betty Heywood—he heard her voice, he saw her face—but somehow another face kept slipping in between—a face with a freckled, tip-tilted nose, and tender, sympathetic mouth. Something within him seemed to warm and gladden, and he dropped off to sleep, at last, with a smile upon his lips.
CHAPTER XII
THE INTERVIEW WITH NIXON
Superintendent Schofield was at his desk bright and early next morning, for the purpose of getting out of the way the thirty-six hours’ accumulation of routine business, before the approaching momentous interview with Nixon. Only one familiar with the executive offices of a railroad has any idea of the immense amount of correspondence,—reports, complaints, requests for information and instructions—which that stretch of time can accumulate, but the superintendent waded into the pile of letters and telegrams with a rapidity born of long practice, and when he finally leaned back in his chair, with a sigh of relief, it wanted still some minutes of nine o’clock.
“That’s all, Joe,” he said, to the stenographer, and that young man gathered up the letters, closed his note-book, and left the room.
Mr. Schofield swung around in his chair and stared down over the yards, his forehead wrinkled thoughtfully.