"Wasn't I right?" asked Ben with some relief.
"You were. I like the girl. I feel we are going to be friends."
"Well, then, how about her being a clerk for Miss Upton?"
Ben asked the question frowning, and flung himself down beside his mother where she had seated herself on a divan. Why couldn't her blood run as fast as his? Why must she be so cold and deliberate at a crucial time? "Going to be friends!" What an utterly inadequate speech!
"I want to talk to you about that," rejoined his mother. "Will you please go into my study and bring me a letter you'll find on the table?"
Without a word, and still with the dissatisfied line in his forehead, the young man rose and moved away toward the closed door of the sanctum.
He opened it and there was a moment of dead silence. Mrs. Barry could visualize Geraldine as she looked standing there, radiantly expectant, mischievously blissful. The door slammed, and all was silence.
The mother laughed softly over the bit of sewing she had picked up. For a minute she could not see very plainly, but she wiped her eyes and it passed.