“How so?” asked the boy, alert for a pleasantry from his elder.
“Why, Phelps carries this fellow ’round with him everywhere he goes, has had him for years, and twice a week all he has to do is to say: ‘Say, Fred; write my wife, will you?’”
His listener broke out into a peal of boyish laughter. “Pretty good!” he applauded the joke.
“It’s a fact,” Paul went on. “Fred writes it and signs it and sends it off, and Phelps never has to trouble his head about it.”
Lydia stepped back into the darkness of the hall.
When she came out later, a misty figure in white, Paul rose, saying, “Well, Walter, I’ll leave you to Mrs. Hollister now. I’ve got some work to do before I get to bed.”
Lydia sat silent, looking at the boy’s face, clear and untarnished in the moonlight. He was looking dreamily away at the lawn, dappled with the shadow of the slender young trees. They seemed creatures scarcely more sylvan than he, sprawled, like a loitering faun with his hands clasped behind his head. His mouth had the pure, full outlines of a child’s.
“What are you thinking about, Walter?” Lydia asked him suddenly.
He started, and brought his limpid gaze to hers. “About how to cross-index our follow-up letter catalogue better,” he answered promptly.
“Really? Really?” She leaned toward him, urging him to frankness.