“There, there,” and Mrs. Allen laughed. “You needn’t take up the cudgels so desperately. I didn’t mean to accuse him of anything.”
“No, of course you didn’t,” and Patty laughed, too; “but whatever big Bill may lack in the way of polish or culture, he’s absolutely honest and honourable, even to an absurd degree.”
“I don’t think he lacks culture, Patty. His manners are all right.”
“Yes, they’re all right, but he hasn’t quite the correct ease of a man like Philip Van Reypen.”
“I know what you mean, and I suppose it’s the effect of the aristocratic Van Reypen ancestry. But Mr. Farnsworth has such a splendid big air of real nobility about him that I think a more formal and conventional demeanour would quite spoil him.”
“Maybe it would,” said Patty, simply.
That very afternoon Farnsworth came to call, and told Patty he had come to say good-bye.
“I know you think my farewells never mean anything,” he said, smiling; “and I don’t wonder, for I often say I am going, and then a telegram obliges me to change my plan. But I think it is positive this time that I shall leave to-night for Arizona.”
“Have you been successful in your undertakings?” asked Patty, with a sympathetic interest.
“Yes, I believe I have. I don’t want to be over sanguine, and matters are not yet entirely settled, but I think I have conquered the obstacles which I came to conquer, and I hope all will go well.”