The other flushed a little, but his eyes softened.
“Maybe not, Will; still—one can always find some use for—a guardian angel, you know,” he finished, almost under his breath.
To Cyril Bertram had occasionally spoken, during the last two years, of their first suspicions concerning Billy's absence. They speculated vaguely, too, as to why she had gone, and if she would ever come back; and they wondered if anything could have wounded her and sent her away. To William they said nothing of all this, however; though they agreed that they would have asked Kate for her opinion, had she been there. But Kate was not there. As it chanced, a good business opportunity had called Kate's husband to a Western town very soon after Billy herself had gone to Hampden Falls; and since the family's removal to the West, Mrs. Hartwell had not once returned to Boston.
It was in April, three years since Billy's first appearance in the Beacon Street house, that Bertram met his friend, Hugh Calderwell, on the street one afternoon, and brought him home to dinner.
Hugh Calderwell was a youth who, Bertram said, had been born with a whole dozen silver spoons in his mouth. And, indeed, it would seem so, if present prosperity were any indication. He was a good-looking young fellow with a frank manliness that appealed to men, and a deferential chivalry that appealed to women; a combination that brought him many friends—and some enemies. With plenty of money to indulge a passion for traveling, young Calderwell had spent the most of his time since graduation in daring trips into the heart of almost impenetrable forests, or to the top of almost inaccessible mountains, with an occasional more ordinary trip to give variety. He had now come to the point, however, where he was determined to “settle down to something that meant something,” he told the Henshaws, as the four men smoked in Bertram's den after dinner.
“Yes, sir, I have,” he iterated. “And, by the way, the little girl that has set me to thinking in such good earnest is a friend of yours, too,—Miss Neilson. I met her in Paris. She was on our yacht all last summer.”
Three men sat suddenly erect in their chairs.
“Billy?” cried three voices. “Do you know Billy?”
“To be sure! And you do, too, she says.”
“Oh, no, we don't,” disputed Bertram, emphatically. “But we WISH we did!”