"But Bob is in New York? You left him there?"
"I left him there, but he didn't stay there. He jumped on the Lusitania the day after I sailed on the Olympic and they nearly beat us in. He came right across from Liverpool and he's up at Ipping House this minute. Wanted to know if he should come to town and I said we were on our way back and to wait where he was."
"My boy!" murmured Mrs. Baxter, and not all the picture hats in Piccadilly could give her the look of joy that her face wore now.
"Seems Bob found trouble in the office that he couldn't write about, so he just came over." The old fellow turned to Betty. "I told ye there was a leak in that New York office."
It was not until they were seated in the train that Eleanor was enlightened as to Miss Thompson's new purpose.
"Mr. Baxter's secretary? It's absurd!" she declared.
"Please don't say that, Mrs. Baxter," pleaded Betty. "I've only just found out about—Father and—I couldn't respect myself if I just did nothing and let Mr. Baxter support me."
"There's the American spirit for ye," approved Hiram.
The train rushed on and presently, as happens in railway journeys, the three lapsed into silence. Hiram thought of his business worries and of his plan for solving the problem of the relatives; Eleanor thought of her son, and Betty thought of various things. Poor child, she had enough to think of! What a sad awakening after all her bright dreams! She wondered who would live now in her lovely Paris apartment that would never be hers again. Who would stand of summer evenings, as she had stood so often, on the balcony outside her bedroom and watch the swallows circling over the chestnut trees on the Champs Élysêes? Perhaps she would never see Paris again!
Then she thought of Bob Baxter, the playmate of her childhood, whom she had not seen for years and years, not since she was a little thing with yellow braids down her back and freckles on her nose. A homely little thing, they always said. She wondered if Bob remembered her as a homely little thing. Perhaps he did not remember her at all.