"Stenographer, indeed!" sang the doctor under his breath, bounding up the stairs like a boy. "Wait till he sees what I am going to get him!" he finished, striding down the hall and into his own room.
Before he slept the doctor wrote his letter to Helen. It was a long one, and a joyous one. It told everything that Burke had said, even to his plaintive plea for a private secretary.
There could be no doubt now, no further delay, declared the doctor. Helen would come home at once, of course. It only remained for them to decide on the mere details of just how and when. Meanwhile, when might they expect her in Boston? She would come, of course, to his sister's first; and he trusted it would be soon—very soon.
Addressing the letter to Mrs. Helen Darling, the doctor tucked it into his pocket to be mailed at the station in the morning. Then, for the few hours before rising time, he laid himself down to sleep. But he did not sleep. His brain was altogether too actively picturing the arrival of Helen Denby and her daughter at the old Denby Mansion, and the meeting between them and the master of the house. And to think that at last it was all coming out right!
CHAPTER XIX
THE STAGE IS SET
Impatient as was the doctor for an answer to his letter, it came before he expected, for a cablegram told of Helen's almost immediate departure for America.
"I thought that would fetch her," he crowed to his sister. "And she'll be here just next week Wednesday. That'll get her up to Dalton before Sunday."
"Perhaps," observed Mrs. Thayer cautiously.