Betty looked up several words in her dictionary, asked a question or two, and they started off. At the telegraph office Mr. Morton wrote two messages just alike: “Unavoidably detained. Back in evening. Clef d’Or best hotel.”
“That will fix them,” he said, smiling cheerfully at Betty. “They’ll spend the afternoon in the sulks, thinking I’ve changed my mind and won’t come in to their game. Now see that he reads them right and tell him to hurry them off, and then we can talk English for a while.
“I’ve done everything to-day that my doctor ordered me not to,” he told her when they were on their way back to the ferry. “I’ve worried about business, I’ve got overexcited and overheated, I’ve lost my temper, and to-night I’m going to do business—the biggest deal I ever put through. You’ve been a Benevolent Adventurer this time all right, Miss—Miss——”
“Wales,” Betty supplied.
“Think I’ll have to call you Miss B. A.,” he laughed. “By the way, how did you find out my name?”
Betty had to think a minute. “Why, we met a man in London who knows you, and then we know your son.”
“You know John?” repeated Mr. Morton irritably.
Betty nodded. “Don’t you remember I told you when we met before what a good time we had in Oban? Well, he was the one we had it with—he and Mr. Dwight. Only I didn’t know it then—I didn’t know he was your son, I mean. And then in London we met him again.”
“You did, eh?” Mr. Morton eyed her sharply. “Met him again in London? Are you at the bottom of this new leaf of his that Dwight wrote me about, Miss B. A.?”
“Oh, no,” said Betty quickly, “but I think Babe is,—at least they got to be awfully good friends, and she hates a shirk.”